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Bukhan or Joson? Seoul debates official name of North Korea
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By
Park Ji-won
Published
Apr 29, 2026 4:42 pm
KST
Participants have a debate during the conference “Naming for Peaceful Coexistence: Bukhan or Joson,” hosted by the Korean Political Science Association and sponsored by the unification ministry at the Press Center in central Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap
“I have never thought of or called North Korea as 'Joson' in my life. Joson for me is the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910),” said Lee Ye-seul, 37, a South Korean office worker.
Like Lee, most South Koreans would never consider calling North Korea by its official name — the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or "Joson" in its shortened Korean form. The familiar term here is "Bukhan," meaning North Korea in Korean.
North Korea, for its part, calls itself "Joson" or "Bukjoson" and refers to its the South as "Namjoson," meaning South Joson.
That ingrained habit is now the subject of a formal public debate. The Ministry of Unification has opened discussions on what South Korea should officially call its northern neighbor, after Unification Minister Chung Dong-young spent recent months consistently using the North's official name of Joson.
The move appears to align with the government’s broader initiative for peaceful coexistence between the two Koreas, a policy considered to be a response to the North’s increasingly hostile two-state policy since 2023, when Pyongyang began openly using the South’s official name of the Republic of Korea, or "Daehanminguk" in Korean, amid fraying inter-Korean relations.
The debate was addressed Wednesday at a conference titled "Naming for Peaceful Coexistence: Bukhan or Joson," hosted by the Korean Political Science Association and sponsored by the unification ministry.
Most panelists argued that adopting the North's official name would not compromise the South's Constitution, which stipulates North Korea as South Korean territory and North Koreans as South Korean nationals.
“Calling North Korea 'Bukhan' didn’t help unify the two Koreas — if anything, it helped entrench the division,” Sogang University professor Kim Sung-kyung said.
“Now is the time to rebuild relations (by referring to each other by their official names), when the two Koreas are firmly established as independent countries.”
Lee Dong-ki, a professor at Gangwon National University, went further, arguing that the two Koreas had already parted ways on a fundamental level.
“The two Koreas started to become different nations. In the long term, we may need to give up on unification or fundamentally reconsider what unification means. This move could help build peace, and calling North Korea by its official name could be the starting point,” Lee said.
Kwon Eun-min, a lawyer at Kim & Chang, addressed the legal dimension, noting that referring to North Korea by Joson does not amount to formal state recognition and does not conflict with Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution, which define the entire Korean Peninsula as South Korean territory and designate the goal of peaceful unification.
However, not all experts claim that calling the North as Joson is appropriate.
Park Won-gon, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University, warned that adopting Pyongyang's preferred terminology would amount to accepting its hostile two-state framework.
"It is the same as giving up on unification,” Park said.
Jo Seong-ryeol, a visiting professor at Kyungnam University, offered a middle ground.
“It is acceptable to call each other in the international settings — as both sides have done at inter-Korean summits. But domestically, it is appropriate to call Bukhan,” Jo is quoted as saying.
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