On the MSO site we use McCune-Reischauer transliterations for Korean names, with sound changes not made. In this way it is always possible to reconstruct the original Korean name accurately.
Koreans themselves do not often use this system. Nor do they use the closely related systems recommended by the Korean government very often. We say "systems" rather than "system" because the government has promulgated several, including a new one in 2000. We can expect official publications to use this, but the rest of Koreans will continue on their own merry way.
The problem with the unofficial transliterations is that it is not systematic or consistent, and indeed can be highly idiosyncratic - the adoption of Leigh for Lee which is actually pronounced Yi, for example. You need to find out from the man himself how he styles himself.
In the case of go players, we know in a few cases the form that a particular player uses. For example, Yi Ch'ang-ho does write his name in English as Lee Changho (though does not pronounce it that way). This is all very well for the majority of English books and magazines that refer only to the handful of prominent top players where this sort of information becomes known. The problem for us at MSO is that we try to give a truly comprehensive coverage of the Korean scene, and so we are constantly referring to minor players, amateurs, officials and companies where the idiosyncratic readings are not known and would be hard to discover. Furthermore, we often refer to Korean place names, which - belonging to no-one in particular - are usually written in a form close to the official or McCune-Reischauer systems.
But that still leaves a question that puzzles many people. Where does the L come from in Lee for Yi? It is from the Oriental habit of trying to adapt their names for a western audience. They therefore reverse their natural order of surname-personal name. Yi Ch'ang-ho thus becomes Ch'ang-ho Yi, but the sound Yi is not used after a vowel in Korean and an L is inserted (or N in some parts of Korea). This give us Changho Lee. In more recent times it has become common even in the west to use the Oriental order, and so we end up with Lee Changho.
A further source of confusion is in sound changes. The rules are complex in Korean but a common change occurs between vowels. Thus Yi Se-tol sounds as Yi Sedol, and can become Lee Sedol by the process just mentioned. A problem here is that Korean has pairs of sounds variously rendered as, for example, t-t' or d-t (not to mention emphasised variants) and it can be difficult to know which letter is intended in the original. Worse, not all sound changes are reflected even in variants favoured in Korea: Park No-shik is pronounced Pang No-sik.
We have therefore chosen to be consistent and stick with McCune-Reischauer, with sound changes not made and with hyphens inserted. We also make the common adaptation - because of varying keyboard standards - of inserting an "e" to show the upside-down circumflex on certain vowels (e.g. "eo" instead of o-circumflex). We also retain the apostrophes and inserted "e" even though official guidance says these can be omitted if there is no confusion, and we ignore the common variant of writing "shi" for "si". Overriding all these rules, however, if a company name has been registered in English in a variant form we use that (e.g. Nong Shim).
To help you find your own way through the morass we append three tables.
Table of McCune-Reischauer forms with corresponding variants.
Reverse table of variants with the corresponding McCune-Reischauer form.
Table of the current Korean pros with the variants that have been recorded in the English literature.
