SEOUL: South Korea — is alphabetical order destiny?

Yes, say Korean scholars and politicians who have begun a drive to change the official English-language name of their country to “Corea.” The seemingly arcane campaign is based on an increasingly prevalent belief that the original “C” was switched to a “K” by the Japanese at the start of their 1910-45 occupation of the peninsula so that their lowly colonials would not precede them in the English alphabetical hierarchy.

The controversy used to be fodder only for linguists and historians, but lately the debate has seeped out of academia and into the realm of the political. Twenty-two South Korean legislators last month introduced a resolution in their parliament calling for the government to adopt the Corea spelling — the first time such a proposal has been made in official quarters in South Korea.

North and South Korean scholars, who rarely agree on much, also held an unusual joint conference last month in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, and resolved to work together for a spelling change. They hope it can be accomplished in time for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, when the estranged countries intend to field a joint team.

“Scholars who have studied this more deeply than I believe it was part of the legacy of Japanese imperialists to eradicate our culture,” said Kim Sung Ho, a South Korean legislator who was one of the sponsors of the new resolution.

Most evidence supporting the claim is circumstantial. English books and maps published through the 19th century generally spelled the country’s name as Corea, as did the British government in laying the cornerstone of its embassy in Seoul in 1890 with the name “Corea.” But sometime in the early 20th century, “Korea” began to be seen more frequently than “Corea” — a change that coincided with Japan’s consolidation of its grip over the peninsula.

Chung Yong Wook, a historian at Seoul National University, believes the Japanese — who controlled the peninsula four years before officially colonizing it in 1910 — changed the name by the time of the 1908 Olympics in London so that Japan would come ahead in the ordering of athletes. But the closest thing he has found to a smoking gun is a 1912 memoir by a Japanese colonial official that complained of the Koreans’ tendency “to maintain they are an independent country by insisting on using a ‘C’ to write their country’s name.”—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Los Angeles Times.