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( Names of Korea)
There are various names of Korea in use today, derived from ancient kingdoms and dynasties. The modern English name Korea is an exonym derived from the Goryeo period and is used by both North Korea and South Korea in international contexts. In the Korean language, the two Koreas use different terms to refer to the nominally unified nation Choson (??) in North Korea and Hanguk (??) in South Korea. The earliest records of Korean history are written in Chinese characters. Even after the invention of hangul, Koreans generally recorded native Korean names with hanja, by translation of meaning, transliteration of sound, or even combinations of the two. Furthermore, the pronunciations of the same character are somewhat different in Korean and the various Chinese dialects (and Japanese and Vietnamese), and have changed over time. For all these reasons, in addition to the sparse and sometimes contradictory written records, it is often difficult to determine the original meanings or pronunciations of ancient names. Until about 2000 years ago, northern Korea and Manchuria were controlled by Gojoseon. In Chinese records, it was written as ??, which is pronounced in modern Korean as Joseon (??). Go (?), meaning "ancient", distinguishes it from the later Joseon Dynasty.
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