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Chinese characters called Hanja in Korean have exerted a strong influence on the formation of Korean toponyms, even after the invention of the Korean scripts Hangeul. This paper summarizes practices of using Hanja in Korean toponyms and investigate unique features occurring in the evolution of Hanja toponyms interactively with their Hangeul counterparts. The diverse use of Hanja components and varied paths of their evolution confirm that the essence of Korean toponyms should be understood by taking note of the role that the Hanja elements have played. It is hypothesized that the semantics would be more important in Hanja toponyms than those in other languages because they are based on logographic characters. Testing this hypothesis remains as a topic for future research.
Sungjae Choo (Fri,) studied this question.