————— T HE G REATER C HINA FACTBOOK (2007) ————— 474 P ART IV: A APPENDIX Japan, Korea, and Vietnam: History and geography Explanation History shows that the political situation in China is often closely connected with events in neigh- bouring countries, particularly in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Knowledge of the most important personal and geographical names related to these countries therefore is very helpful in discussions with Chinese native speakers. However, communication is often hampered by the fact that most Western people only know the romanization of these names, while most Chinese native speakers only know the Chinese pronunciation of the characters of these words. Example: Japan’s current prime minister (shusho 首相 [shouxiang]) is Abe Shinzo. Western newspapers use the romanization of his name’s Japanese pronunciation, but in Japan his name is written in Chinese characters: 安倍晉三. Chinese would pronounce Abe’s name according to the Chinese pronunciation of these characters: Anpei Jinsan. So when a Westerner and a Chinese try to discuss Japanese politics, the Westerner would call the Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzo, while the Chinese would call him Anpei Jinsan. Since this kind of misunderstanding can occur with any personal or geographical name concerning Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, the author deems it necessary to include here the most important personal and geographical names of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam with their Western romanizations, Chinese characters, and Hanyu-Pinyin. The use of Chinese characters in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam Modern Japanese writing is a mixture of Chinese characters (Kanji 漢字 [hanzi]) and Japanese symbols. Chinese characters were first introduced in Japan around 400 AD, and after the 9 th century some Chinese characters were modified to create two sets of symbols (Hiragana 平假名 [pingjiaming] and Katakana 片假名 [pianjiaming]) for the depiction of Japanese syllables. The Korean alphabet Hangul (韓國文字 [Hanguo wenzi]/諺文 [yanwen])—officially seen as invented by King Sejong 李朝世宗 in 1443—was developed gradually based on Chinese characters and officially introduced after World War II. Korean pupils had been made to learn Chinese characters as late as the 1980s. Today’s Vietnamese script was developed in the 17 th century by European Catholic mis- sionaries based on the Latin alphabet and has been officially used since 1945. Vietnam used Chinese characters up to the 20 th century.