This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts MOS:KO WP:MOS-KO WP:MOSKOREA

To write and edit Korea-related articles, please follow these conventions. For consistent naming of Korean people, places, and historical terms, see also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean). For more general guidance on editing conventions, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style.

Footnote or hatnote

Sometimes, it is not obvious to readers which part of a Korean personal name is the family name. You can use the ((Family name footnote)) or ((family name hatnote)) templates to make this clear (see Template:Family name explanation § Footnotes vs. hatnotes).

((family name footnote)) should be added after the first bolded instance of a person's name to produce an inline footnote. For example, on the article for Lee Myung-bak, adding the markup ((Family name footnote|[[Lee (Korean surname)|Lee]]|lang=Korean]])) displays this in context:

Lee Myung-bak^[a] (born 19 December 1941) is a South Korean former politician...

((Family name hatnote)) should be added to the top of an article to produce a hatnote. The markup ((Family name hatnote|[[Lee (Korean surname)|Lee]]||lang=Korean)) would produce this:

Introductory sentence

An encyclopedia entry with a title that is a Korean proper name should include both the Korean characters (Hangul) and the IPA representations for English and Korean in the first sentence. The article title itself should generally be romanized according to the Romanization guideline below.

The template ((Korean)) may be used to add Korean characters and IPA representations to articles' introductory sentences in a consistent manner. For example:

'''Lee Myung-bak''' (((Korean|hangul=이명박|hanja=李明博)); ((IPAc-en|ˌ|l|iː|_|ˌ|m|j|ʌ|ŋ|_|ˈ|b|ɑː|k)); ((IPA-ko|i mjʌŋbak|lang)); born 1941)

output:

Lee Myung-bak (Korean: 이명박; Hanja: 李明博; /ˌliː ˌmjʌŋ ˈbɑːk/; Korean: [i mjʌŋbak]; born 1941)

Korean can be used in other infoboxes. Some, such as ((Infobox settlement)) have |native_name= and |native_name_lang= which can be used for Korean. In this way 'English' infoboxes can be used for Korean topics; for instance ((Infobox royalty)) should be used for Korean kings, see Sejong the Great for an example.

Romanization

There are two widely used Korean romanization systems:

• Revised Romanization (RR) has been the official system in South Korea since 2000 and was created by the government of South Korea to replace the McCune–Reischauer system.
• McCune–Reischauer (MR) is still often (though increasingly less often) used both inside and outside Korea. A variant was used as the official system in South Korea from 1984 to 2000. Another variant is currently the official system in North Korea.

In general, use the Revised Romanization system for articles with topics about South Korea and topics about Korea pre-1945. Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea and pre-1945 Korean names.

For example, Gyeonggi Province, a South Korean province, uses RR instead of Kyŏnggi-do (MR). Kangwon Province, a North Korean province, uses MR instead of Gangwon (RR). Hanja, as a topic which generally relates to the Korean language, uses RR instead of Hancha (MR). In all three topics, both romanizations are introduced through a template.

There are cases in which the romanization differs from the common name used in English sources. As this is the English-speaking Wikipedia, use the name most common in English sources. For instance, Taekwondo is romanized as Taegwondo (RR) or T'aegwŏndo (MR), but uses the English spelling.

If you are not sure how to romanize a word, please also provide its hangul so that another user can later verify or correct your romanization.

Hangul and Hanja

Where relevant, Korean templates should be used in preference to long lists of romanized, Hangul, and Hanja spellings.

For articles that do not use infoboxes, the general rule is to transcribe a name or word into Hangul only once, at the first mention.

Today, North Koreans do not use Hanja, and South Koreans rarely use it, even for place names or personal names. Hanja may be appropriate in specific cases, such as for disambiguation or in some historical contexts.

There are 2 possible methods to introduce Hanja:

1. Goguryeo (Korean: 고구려; Hanja: 高句麗)
2. Goguryeo (고구려; 高句麗)

Mandarin Chinese transcriptions of indigenous Korean words and names (e.g. 寶拉 for the name Bora) are not Hanja, and typically do not merit inclusion in English Wikipedia articles.

Spaces between words

For Hangul, the basic rule of thumb is that there are spaces between words that are each 2 or more syllables in length, while there is no space between 2 one-character words or between a one-character word and a 2-or-more-character word. (The rules are of course actually much more complicated than this and depend upon the grammatical categories of the words in question, but this rule of thumb generally holds for nouns.)

While Hangul and mixed script (Hangul and Hanja together) use spaces between words, text written only in Hanja is usually written without spaces. Thus, gosokhwa doro ("freeway" or "motorway") is written as 고속화 도로 (with a space) in Hangul, but as 高速化道路 (without a space) in Hanja.

Adding links to hangul text

When using ((Linktext)) to hangul text, do not blindly add a link to each hangul syllable. A word or morpheme in Korean is not always one syllable long (e.g. 기다리다 is a single word, not four words). Also, hangul is not a logographic writing system, so there is no point of emphasizing or focusing on each hangul character.

• Add links to meaningful lexical items in Korean. Prioritize words. For example, ((linktext|국립|중앙|도서관)), not ((linktext|국|립|중|앙|도|서|관)).
  • Incorrect links are also not allowed. For example, ((linktext|대학생|선교회)), not ((linktext|대학|생선|교회)) (unless the term really means "college, fish, church").
  • Circumventing this by using other ways of linking (e.g. [[wikt:국|국]][[wikt:립|립]]..., [[wikt:대학|대학]][[wikt:생선|생선]][[wikt:교회|교회]], etc.) is also not allowed.
• Do not add Linktext to
  • personal names (including pseudonyms such as pen names, stage names, etc.). The meaning of a name does not describe a person, and the definition of a personal name is usually nothing more than "a personal name".
  • terms that are not suitable for dictionary entries (e.g. 새터데이 – merely a transcription of English "Saturday" and is not used as a word in Korean).
• Using Linktext is not a requirement.
  • If you do not have enough knowledge of the Korean language to determine meaningful lexical items or whether a term is suitable for a dictionary entry or not, do not add any links. Do not attempt to segment hangul text either (you may end up adding incorrect links).
  • If the meaning of a Korean term must be explained in an article, the explanation can be simply given within that article without the Linktext template.
  • When there is any dispute about using Linktext, the burden lies with the editor who wants to add/retain the Linktext template. But any instance of the Linktext template should be in compliance with the rule above (i.e. should not add a link to each syllable, should not have incorrect links, etc.).
• Note that Linktext does not support a piped link, which means it is not suitable for conjugated forms of verbs/adjectives. For example, it is not possible to create links like [[예쁘다|예쁜]] using Linktext.

Some pages or categories related to Korea need to be categorized within general categories. For example, Category:Military of South Korea is categorized within Category:Military by country. In such cases, it is useful to sort the page or category by country (see Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting). When categorizing Korea-specific content specific within general categories, the sort key should be set to one of the following:

• Use "Korea" for content related to Korea as a whole.
• Use "Korea, North" for content related specifically to North Korea.
• Use "Korea, South" for content related specifically to South Korea.

By standardizing the sort keys, readers can search for Korea-related content in a consistent manner.

It is also often the case that content related specifically to North Korea or South Korea should be categorized within a general Korean category. For example, Category:Religion in North Korea is categorized within Category:Religion in Korea. In such cases, the sort key should be set to " North Korea" or " South Korea" (note the space in front of "North" and "South") so that they appear in the beginning of the page or subcategory list of the general Korean category.

Older browsers are not set up to correctly render Korean text so you should always provide some type of romanization when referring to Korean concepts in articles.

If you are not using the ((Korean)) template or other template designed for Korean characters, wrap your characters in ((lang)) for accessibility and many other reasons. For example:

• Manhwa (((lang-ko|만화)))

produces:

• Manhwa (Korean: 만화)

A generic Korean article template has been created, with the following features:

• An appropriate infobox template (see below)
• A default Category:Korea link. Ideally, the article should link to the appropriate subcategory listed on the Korea-related categories page.

Infobox templates

• Template:Infobox Korean name - for general Korean and South Korean topics. For North Korean topics, use the attribute "context=north".

Geographic

• Template:Regions and administrative divisions of North Korea
• Template:Regions and administrative divisions of South Korea
• Template:Eight Provinces of Korea
• Template:Korea-geo-stub

Language

• Template:Korean
• Template:Lang-ko

Miscellaneous

No name table

• ((WikiProject Korea))
• ((History of Korea))
• ((Five Grand Palaces (Joseon)))
• ((Three Jewels Temples))

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Korea
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Korea/Article guidelines
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Korea/Reliable sources