One thing I love about being bilingual is that I can pick up these weird views on the Korean language and its romanisations systems. Apparently the recent Pusan International Film Festival not only brought films to the people, but it also brought up the discrepancies in the romanisation system. The “p” in “Pusan” apparently confused the foreigners because many of them are used to “Busan”. It strikes me funny that a single letter can cause that much confusion amongst the foreigners.

Then again, I don’t blame them for being confused. I am not confused by the romanisations, but I am stuck in the middle of the two systems: McCune-Reischauer and the Revised Romanisation. I’m the prime example of someone who grew up with the MR system in place, but then in my teens, they decided to get rid of the MR system and replace it with the RR one.

What’s funny, though, is that when I was in fifth grade, I started to learn the Hangeul alphabet. I remember clearly being baffled by the MR system’s spelling. I asked my mum why was “Gwangju” spelled with a “K” instead of with a “G” when the Korean alphabet uses the consonant that’s equivalent to the letter “G”? Or why was it “Taegu” and not “Daegu”? My mum didn’t know how to explain it, so I just decided to go with the flow and accept those spellings as default.

When the RR came into place, I sort of rejoiced and sort of growled about it. After years of typing “Pusan”, “Taejon”, “Kunsan”, and “Cheju-do”, it wasn’t easy trying to switch over to “Busan”, “Daejon”, “Gunsan”, and “Jeju-do”. Now, I see more of the RR system in place, but here and there, I still do see the MR influence, and all I can do is laugh in exasperation and hope that everything becomes consistent one day.