ABSTRACT
For Koreans, name usage is an intensely emotional matter. Names are not merely a matter of labeling for the sake of practical convenience. In countries developed mainly by free migration, as in North America or Australia, there is little concern whether immigrants retain their original names or change them. For the Koreans in Japan, however, the circumstances could hardly be more different. Some naturalized Koreans have begun a campaign to revert legally to their Korean names. This began in the summer of 1982 at the Third National Research Conference on Korean Education in Japan. Until some time after Second World War, it was regarded as normal to read Korean names, when using Japanese, in the Sino-Japanese form. Japanese names, when using Korean, would be pronounced in the Sino-Korean form. But Koreans in Japan came to feel that the Sino-Japanese readings had colonial associations and to demand that the Japanese pronounce their Korean names, when used, in the Sino-Korean way.
