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Joseon

Joseon (Revised Romanization of Korean (RR); Chosŏn (McCune-Reischauer romanization (MR)); 조선 (朝鮮) in Korean; Chosen (朝鮮) in Japanese) is a name for Korea, as used in the following cases:

See Names of Korea for more details on the changing use of the name.

The Sino-Korean characters (Hanja) that make up the name (朝鮮) are often translated into English as "morning calm," hence Korea's English nickname, "The land of the morning calm." However, the Hanja are phonetic and do not represent "morning" or "calm" as it is read in Chinese. 朝 can only mean "morning" when read as zhāo in Chinese, but in the context of Joseon, 朝 is always read as cháo, which means "tide" or "court". Also, 鮮 (xiān in Chinese, seon in Korean) never means "calm", but only means "fresh (food)" or "brightly coloured".

See also