In 2005, South Korea announced that the Chinese name of its capital was officially designated as "Seoul" and informed China that from this time on, the name "Seoul" was officially discontinued in the Chinese circle, and many people thought that the capital of South Korea was renamed at this time.
However, in fact, the name "Seoul" has been abolished by South Korea decades ago, and it has been renamed "Seoul", and only Chinese has been using the name "Seoul" in the world.
The streets of Korea in the sixties
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" > the name Seoul for five hundred years</h1>
Located in the middle of the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, Seoul is a very old city, and during the Baekje Kingdom, the city was built near the mouth of the lower Reaches of the Han River, which was the earliest foundation for the construction of Seoul.
In the fifth century AD, goguryeo, the king of northeastern China, continued to expand to the peninsula, and after occupying the Han River valley, it established the Northern Hansan Commandery here, until the establishment of the Silla Kingdom, which joined forces with the Tang Dynasty to destroy Goguryeo.
After this, the Northern Hansan Commandery, which originally belonged to Goguryeo, was occupied by the Silla Kingdom, where Silla established "Hanju", also known as "NamcheonJu" or "Yangju".
Seoul, where tracks were laid during the Japanese occupation era
During the Goryeo dynasty, because it was located in the center of the peninsula, it became one of the "little three capitals" outside of Wangjing Kaijing (today's Kaesong), called "Nanjing", in the late Goryeo Dynasty, it was planned to move the capital here, and the construction of a palace in the local area was greatly built, but it was not successful, and soon after Goryeo was replaced by the Joseon Dynasty.
The founder of the Joseon Dynasty, Lee Sung-gyu, felt that the old capital of Goryeo, Kaesong, was weak, so he sent people to choose another capital, and Zheng Daochuan and others found that The mountain where Hanyang City was located was surrounded by water, showing an excellent feng shui pattern of dragon sand water caves and landscape belts, so in 1394 AD, the capital was officially moved here, and named it "Seoul", as the capital of the Joseon Dynasty.
Two classes of aristocrats of the Joseon Dynasty
Through the Ming and Qing dynasties of the Central Plains, the Lee clan of Korea lasted for five hundred years, and the name Seoul was also called for more than five hundred years, but in the folk of the Lee Dynasty, people usually called the capital "Hanyang", not "Seoul".
In modern times, the Qing Dynasty itself is difficult to protect, Japan seized the suzerainty of the Joseon Dynasty after the Battle of Jiawu, and then continued to encroach, and finally in 1910 AD, Japan and South Korea were formally merged, and the Korean Peninsula became a colony of Japan, during this period, Japan carried out a drastic reform on the peninsula, renaming Seoul "Gyeonggunfu" and bringing it under the jurisdiction of Gyeonggi Province, that is, from this time, the name "Seoul" gradually disappeared.
Seoul during the Joseon Dynasty
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="12" > Korea was restored and Seoul disappeared</h1>
After the peninsula was ravaged by Japan for decades, it was not until the end of World War II that Japan surrendered, South Korea was not restored, Syngman Rhee announced the abolition of the Name of "Jingcheng" taken by the Japanese shortly after the establishment of the Republic of Korea in the south of the peninsula, but Rhee did not restore the original old name of Seoul, but directly used the "서울" direct title.
The word "서울" is an inherent word in The Korean language means "Capital City", pronounced "Seoul" in Latin alphabet spelling, or "Seoul" in transliteration.
Originally, "서울" meant the capital, but since it became the name of the capital of South Korea, it has gradually become a specific reference to the city, before that, the word did not refer specifically to a city, but specifically to the capital, for example, the United States Seoul is Washington, and the United Kingdom's Seoul is London, and the Italian Seoul is Rome.
The streets of Seoul are full of Chinese characters
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" was renamed > 2005, for Chinese only</h1>
After Rhee announced the use of "서울" as the name of the Korean capital, most countries in the world have changed the name of the Korean capital to "Seoul", which is transliterated as "Seoul", but in the Chinese, it still uses "Seoul".
The Korean Peninsula is deeply influenced by Chinese culture, in ancient times has been the use of Chinese characters, all the cities on the peninsula have Chinese character names, and the original Chinese character name of the Korean capital is "Seoul", but the South Korean side directly abolished this name, but did not give the city a new Chinese name, the Korean capital also became the peninsula, when there was no corresponding Chinese name of the city.
Because of the impact of the Korean War, China and South Korea did not recognize each other, and there was almost no contact, at that time, the Chinese side still called the South Korean capital city Seoul according to its own custom, and the South Korean side did not care about it.
The streets of Seoul in the 1960s
After the normalization of Sino-Korean relations, the two sides have deepened their contacts, and the issue of the name Seoul has also begun to become one of the things that the South Korean side needs to consider, thinking about it, South Korea finally chose the Transliteration of Chinese characters, that is, "Seoul" as the new Chinese name of the Korean capital, this time the name change is only for the Chinese circle, and has no impact on other parts of the world.
In fact, behind the history of Seoul becoming Seoul, is a microcosm of the large-scale de-Sinicization of the peninsula, from the pre-Qin era of the Yin merchant nobles Jizi went to the peninsula and established the early royal power, the Central Plains culture has been continuously introduced to the peninsula, and the most representative of them is Chinese characters, the ancient peninsula only has its own language, but there is no writing, so it can only borrow Chinese characters.
Signage with a mixture of Korean and Chinese
Thanks to the study of Chinese characters, more advanced civilizations were able to spread on the peninsula, and a large number of Chinese vocabulary was also introduced to the peninsula, and more than 70% of the vocabulary in today's Korean language comes from Chinese, and during the reign of Sejong Lee Tsu, the Joseon Dynasty, he founded proverbs, that is, the Korean alphabet.
However, the two classes of nobles and scholars at that time opposed it one after another, believing that proverbs were backward and inaccessible and could not be compared with Chinese characters at all, so the proverbs were shelved for hundreds of years after their invention, and the official script of the peninsula was still Chinese characters.
Until modern times, the peninsula was invaded by Japan, and Western culture continued to spread on the peninsula, when the Koreans who gradually changed their thinking felt the need to become a more independent nation, so the proverb was picked up again and promoted on a large scale, in addition, the Japanese who ran rampant on the peninsula also used Chinese characters, which made the Korean people's impression of Chinese characters worse and worse, thus promoting the large-scale de-Hanization movement on the peninsula.
Once the streets of Seoul
But south Koreans can't be blamed, because at that time, almost the entire East Asian region was de-Hanified, even China itself, at that time, it was a quarrel, a large group of people demanded that Chinese characters be abolished and changed to pinyin characters, fortunately did not succeed.
Although South Korea abolished Chinese characters shortly after the restoration, but in the streets of its large and small cities, there are still chinese characters signs everywhere, or mixed With Chinese and Korean, after all, Korean is a Phonetic script, and There are a large number of words from Chinese in Korean, if written only in Korean, it is easy to misunderstand, which is also the innate deficiency of Korean and all pinyin characters, and until the 1970s, Chinese characters became extremely rare in Korea.
Although Seoul is now a super city, the name "Seoul" has only appeared for a few decades, and compared with "Seoul", which has a history of more than 500 years, it can be said that there is no background.
Chinese characters have long been the official script of Korea