Korean Job Discussion Forums

[citizen erased]

Most countries get to be called their actual name.



Why would anyone hold the US to a different standard?

[i4NI]

A lot of countries don't get called their actual names in English neither. Look at Korea, Japan, China, Germany, etc

As for why is it 美國? I think it was China who came up with the Mi Gook first and Korea followed, but meaning wise I have no idea.

[GreenlightmeansGO]

Some examples, so you don't feel victimised (I could type these in Hangeul, but it's too much stress and I dunno if you can read it. The language is Hanguk-mal, or Hanguk-eo, by the way):

England - Yeonguk (I would guess from yeong-eo, which is Korean for Englishee)
Thailand - Taeguk
China - Junguk
Japan - Ilbon
Germany - Dok-Il
South Africa - Nam Apurika (Africa) OR Nam Ah-gong

That's the way the cookie crumbles. There's no trend to it.

An interesting question to look into is 'why did the Americans in Vietnam call the Vietnamese 'gooks'?'

[CA-NA-DA-ABC]

I know this one. Mee-gook (America) is pronounced "mei-guo" in Chinese. the "mei" portion comes from "America" (A-mei-ri-ca, get it?)

"guo" (gook) simply means country.

the character 美 means "beautiful," but in Japan I think that character is substituted by 米 which has the same pronunciation but means "rice"

edit to add this point: as a general rule, countries that had contacts with Korea early (like during the times when Korea used to be a kingdom) are more likely to have Koreanized names. This is a reason why immediate neighbours like China and Japan, and western powers like the States, Russia and Germany have Koreanized names.

The trend nowadays is to refer to countries by their native language names (eg. Canada is Ca-na-da and East Timor is Dong-timor) if they don't have Koreanized names already.

[Kimbop]

Beautiful country.

[Teelo]

Australia gets a korean name, but New Zealand doesn't

[sojourner1]

Meeegoook. I remember how the US Army veterans who fought in Vietnam called the Vietnamese people, "goooks." I was under the impression that many Asian countries refer to a person as a gook even though the American war veterans commonly used the word in a derogatory fashion.

[Whistleblower]

France, Spain and Italy have their own Hancha equivalent of country names but it eludes me. Any help out there?

[d-rail]

this is what i was told from a korean...miguk literally means beautiful country. mi means beauty. it came from the Chinese character. Gook - country.
something i have often wondered about was the slang word "gook" for asians. people are saying it came from the veitnam war period, but is it possible that it came from the korean war period? a korean sees an american and they say miguk. the american, not knowing any korean, takes it as me gook. You gook? ok, lets go shoot those stinkin commies gook.

[ardis]

I always think it's kind of amusing when someone starts a topic trying to further show how Koreans are being prejudiced against Americans, only to learn that they just opened their big mouths without doing any form of research. Bravo.

[zappadelta]

[cobright]

Mee-guk is a transliteration of the chinese Mei-guo which intentionally means Beautiful Country. When USA and China met it really was a pretty place to live.

The Japanese intentialy used Rice-land in their original term for America because that's what they got from us originally. They bought up our "amber waves of grain" in the form of rice imports. Japan has historically been unable to reliably feed itself without imports (which they hated to do) and here comes a country that can feed them with a hundredth of our ag. capacity. Rice-Land

[Otherside]

[640x480]

Russia is Russia in Korea.
When it was the U.S.S.R it was called So-Ryun (소련).

[CA-NA-DA-ABC]