Joel of Far Outliers has a good post on how Koreans chose their new names when forced to do so by the Japanese occupation; one possibility was:
Retain all or part of the Chinese character, but use its native Japanese reading
* Kim 金 – Keep ‘gold’ but use its Japanese pronunciation, as in 金國 Kanekuni ‘gold country’, 金澤 Kanezawa ‘gold pond’, 金城 Kaneshiro ‘gold castle’, 金田 ‘gold paddy’
* Ch’oe 崔 – Keep the ‘mountain’ radical on top, as in 山本 Yamamoto ‘mountain base’
* Pak 朴 – Keep the ‘tree’ radical, as in 木戸 Kido ‘wood door’, 正木 Masaki ‘upright tree’
* Yi 李 – Keep the ‘tree’ radical, as in 木元 Kimoto ‘tree base’
There were also names based on geographical origins, homonyms, and symbolic names. He adds that “just three surnames, Kim (= Gim), Lee (= Yi, Ri, Rhee, etc.), and Park (= Pak, Bak, etc.) account for 45% of family surnames in South Korea.”
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