Spelling & Capitalization

Geographical Locations and Institutions

Asia Pacific
Beijing (not Beijing City)
Global South
Great Wall
Korean Peninsula
Northeast Asia
northwestern Vietnam
Peking University (Beijing University may be placed in brackets at first use)
Shandong Province, Iijima town (only official administrative designators should be capitalized, as per CMS)
Southeast Asia
southern China
Taiwan Strait
Tsinghua University (Qinghua University may be placed in brackets at first use)
US or USA
Western world

Persons

Diacriticals (accent marks, e.g., macrons, diphthongs, accent grave, etc.) are not required for frequently appearing Romanized names like those below, but for most names we prefer adherence to the Romanization Styles outlined in our Romanization Guide.

Abe Shinzo
Chiang Kai-shek
Chun Doo-hwan
Deng Xiaoping
Kim Dae-jung
Kim Il-sung
Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-un
Kim Young-sam
Lee Myung-bak
Mao Zedong (or just “Mao”)
Park Chung-hee
Park Geun-hye
Roh Moo-hyun
Roh Tae-woo
Suharto
Sun Yat-sen
Syngman Rhee

For less commonly known people, but for whom the person’s preferred spelling is known, the preferred spelling may be used but with the official Romanized version given in the first instance:

Jang Sung-taek (Chang Sŏng-t’aek)

Other

9/11
anticommunist
Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Cold War
COVID-19
decision maker (when used as a noun)
email
delta variant
Hallyu
intergovernmental
Internet
juche (chuch’e)
Kaesong
K-pop
Kuomintang (the Chinese Nationalist Party)
multicultural
multiethnic
multinational
New Village (Saemaŭl) Movement
neo-liberal
nongovernmental
omicron variant
online
Pan-Asian
PhD
policy maker (when used as a noun)
postindustrial
postwar
prewar
Pyongyang
Rodong sinmun
semiskilled
Son’gun
subsystem
subgroup
subsample
turnout
Uyghur
website
World War I (or WWI)
World War II (or WWII)
worldwide