In January 2005, Seoul Mayor Lee Myung Bak held a press conference at the Seoul municipal government and announced that the Chinese name of the Han City would be changed to "Seoul" and the word "Seoul" would no longer be used. The ROK hopes to use this new translation in China. In fact, South Korea changed "Seoul" to "Seoul" a long time ago, but China has not changed its translation.
Seoul was called "Hanyang" in ancient times. So far, Seoul still has a very famous university called "Hanyang University". Later, South Korea became a colony of Japan, and "Hanyang" was forcibly renamed "Seoul".
After South Korea declared independence in 1945, it was renamed "Seoul" The word "Seoul" means "capital" in Korean. Because at that time, we did not want to retain the memory of being ruled by Japan, nor did we want to restore the memory of allegiance to China in ancient times. There was no name to use, so we directly called the capital "Seoul". However, China continued its previous name "Seoul" until it was protested by South Korea in 2005.
So why did South Korea change its capital "Seoul" to Seoul?
The title of "Seoul" follows the usage of ancient Korean historical dynasties. In 1394, Li Chenggui moved the capital from Kaijing to Hanyang and officially named it Hansung. This name has been used in Chinese for more than 600 years. After the end of World War II, South Korea called Seoul the "capital" in Korean, transliterated as Seoul in English, but South Korea's written Chinese characters are still written in Seoul. Therefore, it can be said that the change of the Chinese name of the capital of South Korea is by no means as simple as the surface explanation, but contains profound reasons and other complex considerations.
Development of nationalism
With the rise of nationalism at the end of the 19th century, there has been an ideological trend in South Korea that can not correctly understand its national culture and objectively evaluate the influence of Chinese culture on South Korean national culture, but get rid of the influence of Chinese culture. After World War II, the ideological trend of nationalism in South Korea further developed. According to the law, South Korean phonetic characters were used as special characters. Since 1970, the Chinese characters in Korean primary and middle school textbooks have been cancelled and phonetic characters have been completely used.
With the rise of South Korea's economy, this extreme nationalism developed further. Before the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, the South Korean government ordered to cancel the Chinese character marks on all plaques to emphasize South Korea's national culture.
It was only in February 1999 that President Kim Dae Jung ordered the partial lifting of restrictions on the use of Chinese characters. However, there are also fierce opposition forces in South Korea to this ban lifting measure. They are worried that this measure will lead to the proliferation of Chinese characters and the extinction of Korean characters.
Therefore, in a sense, the change of South Korea's Chinese name to "Seoul" is a manifestation of the continuation and development of its nationalism under the new situation.
Get rid of the influence of Chinese culture
In addition, "Seoul" is a name used by Chinese people hundreds of years ago. Although it originated from ancient Korean ancestors, modern Koreans always feel that it is not their own name, which is easy to associate with China's Han Dynasty. For the Han Dynasty, some Koreans lacked a correct view of history and believed that the four counties established by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty in Korea (special topic, Tuku) were an invasion of the Korean Peninsula.
Therefore, some Koreans have a bad psychological complex about the name and intend to change the translation.
Therefore, in this sense, the official explanation of the name change is only superficial. It is an attempt to cover up the deeper psychological complex with international practices and facilitate international exchanges, and try to get rid of the profound influence of Chinese character culture on South Korea.