This website contains a lot of Korean text. However, how Korean text is romanised is different in different parts of the website. There are reasons for this – none of it is done by mistake – and these are given here.
Korean text is romanised differently on this website depending on whether any given page is a ‘beginner’ page or an ‘advanced’ page. Some of the pages of this website, and some of the sections of this website, are intended to be read by beginner Taekwondo students – people who have just started training in Taekwondo, or who haven’t yet started. An example of this is the Taekwondo FAQs section of the website. Every FAQs page is written for someone who is completely new to Taekwondo.
Korean is a difficult language for English speakers, and romanisations using the McCune-Reischauer Romanisation or the Revised Romanisation are confusing to people who have not been taught anything about Korean phonology. Because of this, the beginner pages and sections of this website use a system of romanisation called the Simplified Romanisation, which is outlined on www.romanisation.net. The Simplified Romanisation is deliberately vague. It does not accurately represent the pronunciation of many Korean words, but it reduces the confusion caused by unusual spellings produced by other romanisation systems.
The following sections of the website are ‘beginner’ sections:
Other parts of the website are ‘advanced’ sections. These are written for someone who has a solid understanding of the basics of Taekwondo – someone who has been training for a few years. In these sections, Korean text is romanised according to the Revised Romanisation of Korean, and sometimes augmented with the McCune-Reischauer Romanisation. The reason for doing this is that in these sections of the website, accuracy is important.
The following sections of the website are ‘advanced’ sections: