The hangul (Korean letters/characters) for this saying is: ?? ? ?? ????.

Someone told me that the spelling of “Corean” was used until the 20th Century, until when conquered by Japan, who decided to change it to be alpabetically after “J” (for Japan/Japanese).  True?  What does Wikipedia think about Corean vs. Korean?

It’s complicated, just like life back in old Guryeo (another old variation).

Turns out to be a mixed bag.  There is this 2008 blog post which nicely traces Corea back to an earlier term… back to “Gogoryu“.  Other people support Corea as being the way to go.  Separately, there are United States news articles and Korean postage stamps from the 19th Century which have the spelling as Korea.

Maybe it just fell back to random chance that “Korea” won out over “Corea”.  Which of these spellings do you use: email or e-mail?  I use both.  But am willing to reconsider.