Gov't gets a clue, rethinks stupid "drunken rice" nickname.

There are, on average, 27 articles per week on makgeolli in South Korea's English-language dailies, and another two or three pieces per day on globalizing Korean food, give or take. In that, um, spirit *cough* is the JoongAng Daily's Tuesday contribution on the "growing obsession" with makgeolli.

You'll remember last week the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announced that it was giving the drink the English nickname "drunken rice" (드렁큰라이스) to somehow facilitate non-Korean understanding of the product. The JoongAng Daily article says that plan has been scrapped because of strong netizen resistance.

The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries held a public contest to develop an official English-language nickname for makgeolli, and last week it announced the winner: “Drunken Rice.” In second and third place were “Makcohol” and “Markelixir.”

The ministry said in release earlier that the nickname should be easy and fun for foreigners to pronounce, and pledged to use the winning name in its marketing activities.

Soon after the results were released, however, the ministry’s Web site was bombarded with postings criticizing the move.

“Unlike in Korea, where alcohol drinking is generously accepted by society, the English word ‘drunken’ conveys considerably negative connotation. Besides, would you find it easy to understand wine if its origin countries called it ‘drunken grape’?” wrote Choi Hae-su.

The article only talked to Koreans, but English-speaking foreigners---ostensibly the target audience---were just as annoyed. On my post I wrote:

Clearly, Drunken Rice isn't as laughable as makcohol, as absurd as markelixir, but what's the point of an English nickname? What does "Drunken Rice" accomplish that makgeolli doesn't? In what way does it make it easier for non-Koreans to comprehend and understand makgeolli, considering most non-Koreans have even never heard of the drink? Finally, what evidence is there of a lack of comprehension and understanding among non-Koreans of makgeolli, and does it exist to so great an extent that an entirely new English name is necessary? The answers to these important questions were likely trumped by the desire to have an English nickname to sound cosmopolitan and smart, forgetting of course that it has the opposite effect on people who actually use the language.

Food blogger FatManSeoul came up with several good reasons why the name, and indeed the whole naming process, was yet another Korean English fail; here's one:

The fact that the new nickname is in (bad) English just demonstrates that the agencies involved are too wrapped up in marketing to western tourists, despite the fact that a huge hunk of the people who clamor for Korean food products and come here for tourism are other Asians. The biggest current market for makgeolli outside Korea is . . . Japan. And you know what name the drink is known under there? The drink that has seen a major expansion of its market there? マッコリ。 Makkori, i.e. the same exact word. Somehow, Fatman doesn’t think they’re thinking of the Japanese and their lust for ドファンケンライス (doraanken raisu)。

There are plenty of comments on The Marmot's Hole as well.

The JoongAng Daily article continues:

Instead, the Presidential Council on National Branding will come up with a simplified romanization of the word by the end of June, the official added, without providing details.

Well, that should be amusing. The romanization of the drink was in the news a little while ago, and via Zen Kimchi comes a post from Schoolhouse: ROK that summarizes the recent talk about the efforts at globalization, including some debate over the romanization makgeolli vs. makolli.