Daehan-minguk

Daehan-minguk
Daehan-minguk
By Andrei Lankov
Most of our readers live in the country whose official name in English is the ``Republic of Korea.'' But how does that name sound in Korean? And how did this name come into being in the first place?
To start with, the official Korean name of the ROK consists of four syllables, Dae Han-Min Guk. Each syllable might be seen as a separate word, or rather a separate root, and all these syllables-words are of Chinese origin.

Let's start from the second syllable, ``han.'' This is a name of Korea that is also a part of its short form, ``Hanguk.'' Historically speaking, Koreans have had many names for their country, and even now the North and South use completely different names for themselves. The North is ``Choson,'' while the South calls itself ``Hanguk.''
Where does the name come from? At the very beginning of the Christian era, the Chinese texts began to refer to some tribes that then inhabited the southernmost part of the Korean peninsula. Those tribes were known as Mahan, Jinhan, and Byeonhan, or, collectively, as the ``Three Han.''
In the 1890s, when the Korean kings proclaimed themselves”, breaking the ties of formal quasi-dependency on China, they needed a name for the new state; a name that should be distinct from the old name of Choson.
They chose to call their state Daehan or ``Great Han'' Empire. This was the official name of the country for the last years of its independence, between 1897 and 1910. When the Japanese took over, they chose to use the former name, Choson.
In 1919, the representatives of the Korean independence movement gathered in Shanghai, China, and proclaimed the foundation of the Korean government-in-exile, known as the Provisional Government.
This was a decisive move, and they needed a new name for a Korean state-to-emerge. They did not want ``Choson,'' since the name had been appropriated by the Japanese colonial regime, so they decided to revive the name used in the final days of independence.
Thus, Korea once again came to be known as ``Daehan'' or the Great Han state. However, the people who gathered in Shanghai did not want to restore the monarchy. A new Korea should become a republic, and this had to be reflected in the official name of the future state.
``民國'' (Min Guk in Korean, minguo in Chinese pronunciation), which literally meant ``people's state.''
Perhaps, they were influenced in their decision by the then official name of China, which also included the same pair of characters to convene the word ``republic.'' Hence, Daehan-minguk was born in 1919.
When in August 1948 the South Korean state came into existence, it was called Daehan-minguk or the Republic of Korea in English. The Communist North chose a different name.

Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He has recently published ``The Dawn of Modern Korea,'' which is now on sale at Kyobo Book Center and other major bookstores. The book is based on columns published in The Korea Times. He can be reached at mailto:anlankov@yahoo.com