The younger generation may not know that Seoul, the current capital of South Korea, was not called this before, but a completely different name, called Seoul.
The name Seoul has a long history. As you can see from the name, the influence of Chinese culture is revealed inside and out.
The name of Seoul is also derived from Hanyang.
In 1392, Joseon Taejo Lee Sung-gye destroyed Goryeo and established the Joseon Dynasty. The new dynasty needed a new atmosphere, and Yi Sung-gye believed that the capital of the Goryeo Dynasty, now Kaesong, Korea, was in decline and could not nourish the majesty of the king, so he ordered the royal capital to be moved to Hanyang, north of the Han River.
After two years of upgrading Hanyang, Yi Sunggui led all the royal nobles to move from the capital to Hanyang, and renamed Hanyang as Hanseong.
Hanyang is located north of the Han River. In the Chinese cultural circle, Shuibei means "yang", so most of the cities located on the north bank of the water are named after the character "yang". For example, Luoyang, the thousand-year-old capital of China, was named because it was located north of Luoshui. There are many more similar examples, and I will not list them all. Therefore, the naming of Hanyang reflects the influence of Chinese culture.
Hanyang was changed to Seoul because after becoming the capital, the name of the city had a higher meaning.
This is the historical background of Hanyang's renaming to Seoul.
After the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan occupied Korea until the surrender of Japan in World War II, and Korea entered the period of Japanese occupation. Japan downgraded Seoul's status to a county and changed its name to Gyoshi.
Even the name Beijing is a name in the Chinese cultural circle.
After the surrender of Japan, Korea** and Korea became independent, and the capital was renamed seo-ul (seoul, which is not the name of the city, but the meaning of "capital" in the proverb.
In other words, both the former Seoul and Gyeongseong were abandoned, because they were not the names of the Korean Chinese, and South Korea wanted to regain its linguistic and cultural confidence, so it first changed the name of the national capital.
Therefore, in South Korea, the capital does not have a specific name, it is simply called "capital". Does that sound a bit awkward?
For example, the capital of China is Beijing, and although it is called the capital, the name is still Beijing. If China had changed its capital, Beijing would still be Beijing, and the new capital would have been another city.
However, in South Korea, once the current capital is no longer the capital, it does not even have a name, as if it has lost its identity, and it may need to be renamed when the time comes.
This is the difference between the capitals of China and South Korea.
As a result, the South Korean capital has not had an official Chinese character name for a long time, and China and South Korea have not established diplomatic relations for a long time, so they do not care why Koreans call the capital. Therefore, the Chinese have always called the capital of South Korea Seoul.
The most famous example is the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
At that time, the Koreans were dissatisfied, because we called our capital Seoul, and Han didn't mean China? What do you mean?
Even after the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea in 1992, China continued to call South Korea's capital Seoul for the same reason.
In fact, such a title does not only exist in China, but also in the world's Chinese-speaking cultural circles, and the capital of South Korea is still called Seoul.
However, the Koreans did not**.
Until 2005, when Lee Myung-bak was the first in South Korea, he officially set the Chinese character name of the Korean capital as "Seoul", that is, the Chinese character "Seoul" pronounced "Seoul" as the official Chinese character name of the capital.
Once that was decided, South Korea notified China separately that it would no longer call my capital Seoul, but Seoul. In fact, South Korea's only purpose in notifying China is to use China's influence in the Chinese cultural community to correct the phenomenon of Seoul being called Seoul in the global Chinese community.
China did not object, and in this way, China began to gradually transition the title of the capital of South Korea from Seoul to Seoul.
In general, South Korea is only trying to remove the influence of Chinese culture.
Curiously, however, South Korea only changed the Chinese character names of the capital, while the Chinese character names of other cities did not.