McCune–Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced (a modified) McCune–Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000. Another variant of McCune–Reischauer is used as the official system in North Korea.

The system was created in 1937 by two Americans, George M. McCune and Edwin O. Reischauer. With a few exceptions, it does not attempt to transliterate hangul but rather to represent the phonetic pronunciation. McCune–Reischauer is widely used outside of Korea. A variant of it was used as the official romanization system in South Korea from 1984 to 2000. A third system — the Yale Romanization system, which is a transliteration system — exists, but is used only in academic literature, especially in linguistics. During the period of Russian interest in Korea at the beginning of the 20th century, attempts were also made at representing Korean in Cyrillic.

The McCune–Reischauer system is friendly to Westerners.^{[citation needed]} For example, Korean has phonologically no distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants, but it phonetically distinguishes them. Aspirated consonants like "p' ", "k' ", and "t' " are distinguished by apostrophe from unaspirated ones, which may be falsely understood as a separator between syllables (as in 뒤차기 → twich'agi, which consists of the syllables twi, ch'a and gi). The apostrophe is also used to mark transcriptions of ㄴㄱ as opposed to ㅇㅇ: 잔금 → chan'gŭm vs. 장음 → changŭm).

Ryu Hyun-Jin (Hangul: 류현진, Hanja: 柳賢振) (born March 25, 1987 in Incheon, Gyeonggi-do) is a South Korean left-handed starting pitcher who plays for the Hanwha Eagles in the Korea Baseball Organization.

Ryu attended Dongsan High School in Incheon, South Korea. In 2005, he led his team to the Blue Dragon Open National High School Championship, pitching 22 scoreless innings in the tournament, and was named Best Pitcher. In 2005, he was selected for the South Korea national junior team that was runner-up at the 6th Asian Junior Baseball Championship in Seoul, South Korea. Ryu started the semifinal match against Chinese Taipei, and helped his team reach to the final, earning 10 strikeouts and giving up one unearned run on 4 hits in 6 innings. During the competition, he pitched 8¹⁄₃ innings with 14 strikeouts, and gave up an unearned run on 5 hits in 3 games (1 start).

In July 2005, Ryu was selected by the Hanwha Eagles with the 1st pick in the second round of the 2006 KBO Draft, and made his professional debut on April 12, 2006. In his rookie year of 2006, Ryu burst onto the scene, going 18-6 with a 2.23 ERA and 205 strikeouts in 201.2 innings pitched. He earned the pitching Triple Crown, and was eventually named both Rookie of the year and Player of the Year. He became the only player in KBO history to win both the Rookie of the Year award and the MVP award in the same season.

Lim Chang-Yong (Hangul: 임창용; born June 4, 1976 in Gwangju, South Korea) is a South Korean right-handed closer who plays for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in Nippon Professional Baseball.

He is widely known as the fastest sidearm pitcher in baseball history who can throw a 160 km/h (99.4 mph) four-seam fastball, though the pitch usually sits at 93-95 mph (150-153 kph). His signature pitch is his two-seam fastball which, due to its unique tailing movement has earned its nickname "Serpant fastball(Hangul: 뱀직구)". His other pitches include a high 70s slider with a sharp horizontal break, a mid 80s forkball, and a rarely used 60 mph (97 km/h) slow-curveball. He is one of the few pitchers who can pitch in multiple pitching forms. Lim pitches primarily sidearm and underhand, but does pitch from the three-quarters motion at will.

Lim made his pro debut in 1995 with the Haitai Tigers in Korea Baseball Organization, and has been regularly picked for the South Korean baseball team as a relief pitcher since the 1998 Asian Games, and won the bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics and two Asian Game gold medals in 1998 and 2002.

Kris Kross was an American rap duo of the 1990s comprising Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly and Chris "Daddy Mac" Smith. The duo are best known for their hit 1992 song "Jump", which was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks and was certified double platinum as a single. Kris Kross was also noted for their fashion style, which consisted of wearing their clothing backwards. The duo sung the Rugrats Rap for Nickelodeon in 1993.

Atlanta natives Kelly (born August 11, 1978) and Smith (born January 10, 1979) were discovered in 1990 by 18-year-old Jermaine Dupri at an Atlanta shopping mall. Along with Dupri they signed a deal with Ruffhouse Records, and recorded their debut album Totally Krossed Out. Entirely produced by Dupri, Totally Krossed Out, was released March 31, 1992 and sold four million copies in the U.S. It included the hit single "Jump", which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks.

The duo landed a spot on Michael Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour, as well as a cameo appearance on Jackson's "Jam" music video. The music videos from their own album also experienced major success. The video for "Jump", directed by filmmaker Rich Murray went to No. 1 on MTV and sold over 100,000 copies as a VHS 'video single' and the video for their followup single "Warm It Up", also directed by Murray won a Billboard video award for "Best New Artist". In addition to this, they also made appearances in the music videos for Run-D.M.C.'s "Down with the King" and TLC's "Hat 2 Da Back". They were also featured in an episode of A Different World, and the closing musical act on May 29, 1992 episode of In Living Color.

Jo Kwon (Hangul: 조권, born August 28, 1989) is a South Korean singer and entertainer, leader of ballad boyband 2AM.

Jo Kwon, commonly known as Sacre Bleu, is the longest-serving male trainee in JYP Entertainment, having trained for 2567 days; exactly 7 years and 12 days since joining JYP. He was chosen as the last members of Park Jin Young's "99% Challenge Project" along with Sunye of Wonder Girls.^{[citation needed]}

In 2008, he appeared on MNET's Hot blood, a program that showed the intense physical training that 13 male trainees had to go through for the opportunity to debut in either 4-member ballad group or 7-member dance group One Day under JYP Entertainment. After getting through the eliminations, Jo Kwon was given the position of 4-member ballad group's leader.He has been attending Kyung Hee University.

2AM's first single "This Song" release July 21, 2008 and made their debut performance on July 11, 2008 performing "이 노래" ("This Song").

Jo Kwon regularly appears as a regular guest on variety shows such as "Star King", popular for his playful and frivolous dance gags. He was part of "Dirty Eyed Girls" on an episode of 2PM's variety show "Wild Bunny", performing a parody of popular Brown Eyed Girls song Abracadabra. The music video became extremely popular. In September 2009, Jo Kwon was one of the main MCs for SBS's environmental variety show "Find it! Green Gold" with Super Junior member Shindong, SS501 member Kim Hyung Joon, and former Fly To The Sky member Brian Joo. He also replaced Jaebeom on historical culture variety show Nodaji after his internet controversy. Both shows were later canceled due to low ratings.^{[citation needed]}