Korean romanization turns Hangul into the Latin alphabet so non-Korean readers can pronounce names, places, and words. This free tool supports the two systems you meet most: the official Revised Romanization of Korean used on South Korean road signs and passports, and the scholarly McCune-Reischauer system common in academic writing.
How it works
Every modern Hangul syllable block is composed of up to three parts: an initial consonant (choseong), a medial vowel (jungseong), and an optional final consonant (jongseong). Because the blocks are laid out in a regular grid in Unicode (U+AC00 to U+D7A3), the tool decomposes each block arithmetically: subtract the base 0xAC00, then the choseong index is floor(code / 588), the jungseong is floor((code % 588) / 28), and the jongseong is code % 28.
Each jamo index maps to a Latin value from the chosen scheme’s table. Revised Romanization writes the initial ㄱ as g, ㅂ as b, and ㅓ as eo; McCune-Reischauer writes them as k, p, and ŏ. The tool joins the parts per syllable and concatenates the blocks.
Tips and notes
For everyday use — addresses, brand names, search — pick Revised Romanization, since it matches official signage and avoids special characters. Choose McCune-Reischauer when matching library catalogues or older scholarship that uses ŏ, ŭ, and apostrophes. Korean has assimilation rules across syllable boundaries (for example, ㄱ before ㄴ softens), so for critical proper nouns confirm against an authoritative source. Unrecognised characters are left untouched, and everything runs locally in your browser.