Boscopher is not entirely correct with
Korean translation.
Here are some
Korean nouns and definitions:
- "Han-guk" = Korea (literally: Han country)
- "Han-guk-in" = Korean people/person (literally: Han country people/person)
- "mi-guk" = USA (literally: beautiful country)
- "mi-guk in" = "American" people/person (literally: beautiful country people/person)
Here, Han is different from the ancient
Han dynasty of
China, and uses different characters.
Names of most countries end with a country character as a suffix: "guk" in
Korean, "guo" in
Chinese, "koku/goku" in Japanese, and I suppose a similar system might also exist for
Vietnamese.
The Chinese-origin morpheme for "person/people" is "in" while the Korean-native word for it is "sharam."
The slang "gook" in American-English is a derogatory term for East Asians. What the dictionaries have to say about the origin is also note-worthy.
American Heritage dictionary says:
Perhaps alteration of earlier goo-goo, native inhabitant of the Philippines, Pacific islander.
The current version of Webster says:
Origin unknown