James Whitrock Junior, who spent four years in Korea from 1994 to 1998 as political consul at the American Embassy in Korea, has published a book titled "Chinese Characters in Korean." The book is a good guide not only for foreigners, but also for ethnic Koreans who know little about Korean. "When I said that I'd be learning Korean, the foreign language instructor at the State Department said, 'Congratulations, you will be learning the hardest language existing in this world.' I also thought so, until I started understanding Chinese characters in the language."

Whitrock is a diplomat who majored in Political Science at Duke University and received a Ph.D in Law from Georgetown University. From 1962 till he retired last fall, he lived in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Being fluent in German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, as well as Swahili, he was confident that he would soon conquer Korean without much difficulty. However, he had to raise the white flag before Korean.

"I could read without a problem, but when it comes to the meaning, I couldn't even guess. Chinese characters are particularly troubling. But I had no way of avoiding them, since 70% of Korean is based on Chinese characters." It was then that Whitrock waged war on Chinese characters. At the beginning, he prepared a Korean glossary and started separating the base Chinese characters and their meaning out of each word. Soon, he realized that Chinese characters were made out of smaller meaning particles, and so he started reorganizing his glossary accordingly.

"The composition principle of a Chinese character is like chemistry. Just like atoms are joined to form molecules, and these to form a compound, meaning particles are joined to form letters, to be combined and form words."

It is out of this thought that he came up with the idea of learning 2,300 Chinese characters and in this 1,000-page book, he explains his unique way of studying Chinese. For those who don't have a clue about Chinese characters, he has organized the book in alphabetical order using the first meaning particle. Although a number of inter-Korean conflicts broke out and domestic events such as presidential election and transition of power took place during his stay in Korea, he didn't give up his study.

Having spent most weekends and weekday nights wrestling with Korean language study, he feels sorry and thankful to his wife for having endured. He has no intention of voicing his opinion about the on-going dispute about using Korean and Chinese characters jointly or just Korean, but believes that just like Latin and Greek enrich the English language, the same can be true in Korean.

Whitrock celebrated the publication of the book at the Sejong Cultural Center on Thursday night, where the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade; president Lee In-ho of the International Exchange Foundation; former UNESCO secretary general, Kim Kyu-taek; and president Jeon Hee-tae of Hankang Rotary Club attended along with 100 other luminaries.