Korean romanization turns Hangul into the Latin alphabet so non-Korean readers can pronounce names, places, and words. This free tool supports the two systems you meet most: the official Revised Romanization of Korean used on South Korean road signs and passports, and the scholarly McCune-Reischauer system common in academic writing.
How it works
Every modern Hangul syllable block is composed of up to three parts: an initial consonant (choseong), a medial vowel (jungseong), and an optional final consonant (jongseong). Because the blocks are laid out in a regular grid in Unicode (U+AC00 to U+D7A3), the tool decomposes each block arithmetically: subtract the base 0xAC00, then the choseong index is floor(code / 588), the jungseong is floor((code % 588) / 28), and the jongseong is code % 28.
Each jamo index maps to a Latin value from the chosen scheme’s table. Revised Romanization writes the initial ㄱ as g, ㅂ as b, and ㅓ as eo; McCune-Reischauer writes them as k, p, and ŏ. The tool joins the parts per syllable and concatenates the blocks.
Revised Romanization versus McCune-Reischauer
| Feature | Revised Romanization (2000) | McCune-Reischauer (1937) |
|---|---|---|
| Official status | South Korean government standard | North Korea, academia, US Library of Congress |
| Special characters | None (no diacritics) | Breve (ŏ, ŭ) and apostrophes |
| ㅓ (vowel) | eo | ŏ |
| ㅡ (vowel) | eu | ŭ |
| ㄱ (initial) | g | k |
| ㅂ (initial) | b | p |
| ㄷ (initial) | d | t |
| Use case | Road signs, passports, tourism, search | Libraries, scholarships, North Korean names |
Revised Romanization example
서울 → Seoul · 부산 → Busan · 한국 → Hanguk
McCune-Reischauer example
서울 → Sŏul · 부산 → Pusan · 한국 → Han’guk
Key limitations to know
Both systems romanize syllable by syllable using a jamo-to-letter table. Korean, however, has phonological rules that change how jamo sound when they cross syllable boundaries — a phenomenon called 연음 (yeony-eum, linking) and various consonant assimilation rules. For example, 한글 is pronounced closer to “Han-geul” than “Han-geul” on paper, but the boundary consonants in many words shift considerably.
This converter applies syllable-level romanization without modelling all cross-boundary assimilation rules. For common place names and personal names the output matches standard usage, but for precise linguistic transcription or words with complex consonant clusters across syllable boundaries, verify against an authoritative source.
Choosing the right scheme
- Revised Romanization — for anything the public will read: addresses, business cards, product names, web URLs, maps, Korea tourism, and any context where you want to avoid diacritics.
- McCune-Reischauer — for academic papers, library catalogue entries, matching older Western scholarship that uses MR, and for North Korean names or geographical names (MR remains the standard in most Western libraries for DPRK romanization).
Unrecognised characters (Latin letters, numbers, punctuation) are left untouched, and everything runs locally in your browser.