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).

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.