What does the most common usage of 'Korea' mean in modern-day English-speaking world?

On Meta.Travel.SE, we have a debate whether our 'Korea' tag should be mapped to 'South Korea'. One of the answers - from the moderator who made the synonym mapping - is that common usage of the word 'Korea' often refers to South Korea the country rather than Korea the region, and when people refer to the political entity of North Korea, they specifically use the 'North' qualifier.

I ran a search on Google's Ngram Viewer on their corpus for period 1940-2008 which shows the frequency of usage of 'Korea' vs 'South Korea' vs 'North Korea'. As you can see, 'South Korea' and 'North Korea' as terms are pretty close, with 'Korea' being the more widely used word.

My question is this: in modern-day usage - not historical - what is the word 'Korea' most commonly understood to mean - the region as a whole or just South Korea?

EDIT: To clarify, I'm not asking what synonym mapping to use on Travel.SE. What I'm more interested in knowing is that in English-language usage, what sense is 'Korea' most commonly used to mean.

Solution 1:

The use of "Korea" to mean "South Korea" is far more common in the adjectival form. E.g. "Korean automaker", "Korean pop music" or "Korean soap opera".

Owing to North Korea's status as an economical, cultural, and political walled garden - or perhaps it's more apt to say "walled mudflat" - there are very few words to which the adjective "Korean" commonly applies for outsiders. "Dictator", of course, is the obvious exception.

Thanks largely to the media, this adjectival shorthand usage is firmly entrenched.

In nounal form, my sense is that the mapping is much further from one-to-one. (Since I don't know how to search one of these online corpuses for "this when not neighbored by that", I can't confirm that anecdotal evidence with data, alas.)

While "Korea" would be formally correct within their own language since they are formally the Republic of Korea, in English the pattern of usage I observe is to at the very least differentiate them on first usage.

For example, this is a pattern I hear often in the financial news: "Korean automaker Kia announced today it will be bringing 50,000 new jobs to South Korea. The company has long dominated the auto market in Korea and is now seeking..."

First nounal mention: South Korea. Subsequent mentions can be simply Korea.

So I'd lean toward not linking the tag Korea to South Korea exclusively.

Solution 2:

In American usage, Korea refers nearly exclusively to South Korea. I think most people would assume South Korea, unless you specified North Korea. Many consumer goods are marked "Made in Korea," meaning South Korea, since (I believe) North Korea manufactures few goods and the U.S. imports none.

I think it would be safe to map the tag to South Korea, and the very few people travelling (with great difficulty) to North Korea could specify otherwise.

Solution 3:

I suspect that the Ngram you provided cannot be interpreted in such a straightforward fashion. Results for "Korea" will also include those entries where the term appeared as a part of "South Korea" or "North Korea". Furthermore, historical uses of the term would also be included and therefore the Ngram cannot be used as a means of comparison.

I agree with Barrie that Korea by itself is an ambiguous term and you should be specific as to whether you mean South or North Korea to avoid confusion. That said, if someone would say just "Korea", I personally would assume it to be South Korea (though I would ask for clarification to be sure).

Using the official names would definitely not be a good idea since most people aren't familiar with such names. For a non-Korean example: the Republic of China refers to Taiwan, but many people are unaware of this and would assume it to mean China (as in the People's Republic of China).

Solution 4:

Korea alone is ambiguous. The official names also risk confusion, since South Korea calls itself the Republic of Korea, while North Korea calls itself The Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In informal contexts it’s probably safest to stick with South Korea in referring to the country in the southern part of the peninsula, but you may want to seek advice from the South Korean government or from one of its diplomatic missions.