Korean Romanization Converter

How to use

1. Paste or type Hangul into the Korean text box.
2. Keep “Official RR” selected for places, ordinary words and sentences.
3. Choose “Passport name” for a full Korean name written family name first.
4. Review the live result and copy it when it is ready.
5. For a passport or legal record, compare the result with the spelling already issued by the authority.

What Revised Romanization writes

Revised Romanization (RR) is South Korea’s official Romanization system. It was introduced in 2000 and is the system used for many road signs, maps and public names. It uses ordinary Latin letters rather than the breves and apostrophes found in McCune–Reischauer: 서울 is Seoul, 부산 is Busan and 경복궁 is Gyeongbokgung. The current Korean notice is Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Notice No. 2024-27.

RR follows Korean pronunciation at a syllable boundary, not a simple one-character substitution. This is why 종로 becomes Jongno and 신라 becomes Silla. The converter handles common liaison, nasalisation, ㄴ/ㄹ lateralisation and ㄷ/ㅌ + 이 palatalisation, so 한국어 becomes Hangugeo and 같이 becomes gachi. A spelling alone cannot resolve every compound-word or dictionary-pronunciation exception, so check official names against their published form.

Korean names and passport spelling

A personal name is not the same task as a place-name conversion. In Korean name conventions, the family name comes first and the given name is normally written as one unit or with an optional hyphen between its syllables. Existing passports, certificates, school records and airline tickets should keep their established Roman spelling. For example, Kim, Lee and Park are widespread customary spellings even where a direct RR result differs.

The Passport name option keeps the family-name-first structure and uses common spellings for frequent surnames such as 김 → Kim, 이 → Lee and 박 → Park. It does not claim to issue or override a passport name. Before applying for or changing a legal document, use the exact Roman spelling required by the issuing authority; an automatic converter cannot decide whether an existing family spelling must be retained.

Private, local text conversion

This converter performs its rule lookup in the page. Korean text is not sent to a translation or address service, so it is suitable for draft names, notes and lists that should stay on your device. The latest input, selected mode and capitalization setting are saved only in this browser to protect against an accidental refresh. Choose Clear to remove the saved input from this browser.

Non-Korean characters are left where they are. That means a mixed note such as 안녕, world! 😀 remains readable after conversion, while its Hangul becomes Annyeong. Modern Hangul entered in decomposed Unicode form is normalised before conversion, which avoids a different result when text was copied from a source that stores Korean jamo separately.

Frequently asked questions