Beom-seok is a

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

masculine given name. Its meaning differs based on the

hanja Hanja (; ), alternatively spelled Hancha, are Chinese characters used to write the Korean language. After characters were introduced to Korea to write Literary Chinese, they were adapted to write Korean as early as the Gojoseon period. () ...

used to write each syllable of the name. There are 13 hanja with the reading "beom" and 20 hanja with the reading " seok" on the

South Korean government The government of South Korea () is the national government of the Republic of Korea, created by the Constitution of South Korea as the executive, legislative and judicial authority of the republic. The president acts as the head of state and ...

's official list of hanja which may be registered for use in given names. The name may be spelled various ways in the

Roman alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from —additions su ...

. One customary spelling, Bum-suk, became a source of mirth to

Anglophones The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and two billion people spoke English, making it the largest language ...

in the 1950s and again in the 1980s, when two South Korean politicians who spelled their name that way rose to prominence. As a result, other transcriptions such as Pom-sok came into wider use. People with this name include: *

Lee Beom-seok (prime minister) Lee Beom-seok (; October 20, 1900 – May 11, 1972), also known by his art name Cheolgi, was a Korean independence activist who served as the prime minister of South Korea from 1948 to 1950. He also headed the Korean National Youth Associati ...

(1900–1972), Korean independence activist and politician * Lee Bum Suk (foreign minister) (1925–1983), South Korean politician * Oh Beom-seok (born 1984), South Korean football player * Cho Beom-seok (born 1990), South Korean football player

References

{{given name Korean masculine given names Masculine given names