Hangul Romanization Table

This table compares five systems for transliterating Hangul characters into Latin - the ISO/TR 11941:1996, the national systems of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North) and the Republic of Korea (South), the McCune-Reischauer system (on which previous versions of the national systems were based), and the Yale system which is used primarily for academic texts.

This table is somewhat limited in that there are complicated rules based on pronunciation that determine the conversion of Korean syllables into Roman, which are applied differently in different romanization systems and which, for reasons of economy, are not reproduced here. The romanizations given here reflect only the most typical values. Most of these rules concern consonants which are often assimilated when used in combination.

For more details on some of the romanization systems in this table please see:- ISO/TR 11941:1996

• Revised Romanization of Korean (South)
• Yale Romanization

There are two ways that ISO/TR 11941 can be applied. Where two Latin equivalents are given in the ISO/TR column, separated by a slash, the first corresponds to Method 1 and the second to Method 2.

Korean	ISO/TR 11941:1996	National (North)	National (South)	McCune-Reischauer	Yale
ᄀ	k/g	k	g, k1	k	k
ᄁ	kk/gg	kk	kk	kk	kk
ᄂ	n	n	n	n	n
ᄃ	t/d	t	d, t1	t	t
ᄄ	tt/dd	tt	tt	tt	tt
ᄅ	l, r1	r	r, l1	r, n, l	l
ᄆ	m	m	m	m	m
ᄇ	p/b	p	b, p1	p	p
ᄈ	pp/bb	pp	pp	pp	pp
ᄉ	s	s	s	s	s
ᄊ	ss	ss	ss	ss	ss
ᄋ2	’ 3, -, ng	-, ng	-, ng	-, ng	-, ng
ᄌ	c/j	j	j	ch	c
ᄍ	cc/jj	jj	jj	tch	cc
ᄎ	ch/c	ch	ch	ch’	ch
ᄏ	kh/k	kh	k	k’	kh
ᄐ	th/t	th	t	t’	th
ᄑ	ph/p	ph	p	p’	ph
ᄒ	h	h	h	h	h
ㅏ	a	a	a	a	a
ㅐ	ae	ae	ae	ae	ay
ㅑ	ya	ya	ya	ya	ya
ㅒ	yae	yae	yae	yae	yay
ㅓ	eo	ŏ	eo	ŏ	e
ㅔ	e	e	e	e	ey
ㅕ	yeo	yŏ	yeo	yŏ	ye
ㅖ	ye	ye	ye	ye	yey
ㅗ	o	o	o	o	o
ㅘ	wa	wa	wa	wa	wa
ㅙ	wae	wae	wae	wae	way
ㅚ	oe	oe	oe	oe	oy
ㅛ	yo	yo	yo	yo	yo
ㅜ	u	u	u	u	wu
ㅝ	weo	wŏ	wo	wŏ	we
ㅞ	we	we	we	we	wey
ㅟ	wi	wi	wi	wi	wuy
ㅠ	yu	yu	yu	yu	ywu
ㅡ	eu	ŭ	eu	ŭ	u
ㅣ	i	i	i	i	i

This article formerly appeared on ScriptSource.

Footnotes

1. g, d, b, and r are used when followed by a vowel; k, t, p and l are used word-finally or when followed by a consonant. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. ᄋ is not romanized syllable-initially, except in ISO/TR 11941 which uses a ‘ symbol at the beginning of a word. Syllable-finally it is romanized ng in all systems. ↩

3. An apostrophe is used to indicate the beginning of a new syllable in a polysyllabic word. For more details on how this is applied, please see the Report on the current status of UN romanization systems for geographical names for Korean (This link will download the report in PDF format). ↩