McCuneReischauer

The McCune–Reischauer romanization system (MR) is a method for transcribing Korean into the Latin alphabet. It was developed by American linguists George M. McCune and Martin Reischauer and published in 1939. MR was widely adopted in scholarly works and in library catalogs, and it remained the dominant system in many academic contexts throughout much of the 20th century.

MR uses diacritic marks and punctuation to encode aspects of Korean phonology that are not reflected by plain ASCII letter sequences. Vowel qualities are shown with diacritics (for example ŏ and ŭ), and aspirated consonants are indicated by special marks such as apostrophes. The system also preserves certain phonological distinctions, such as the treatment of the Korean l/r consonant in different positions, and it aims to provide a reversible transcription that reflects pronunciation more closely than simple transliteration.

With the introduction of the Revised Romanization of Korean (RR) by South Korea in the 2000s, MR declined in official use. Nevertheless, MR remains prevalent in older scholarly works, many dictionaries, and in certain linguistics contexts where a faithful representation of Korean phonology is valued. It is sometimes preferred for etymological and historical study because it preserves contrasts that RR no longer marks.

Examples commonly cited in MR include Seoul as Sŏul and Busan as Pusan.