This study traces the origin of the current <Romanization of the Korean Language> back to the 19th century to engage in a discursive analysis of Romanization. Central to this discussion is the question of what the object of the discourse is, as discourse is not inherently given but is constructed through a particular perspective. This paper examines the context that led to the development of Romanization in the 19th century to identify the object of the Romanization discourse and the trajectory it followed. Furthermore, it investigates 19th-century texts that addressed Romanization issues to seek for the perception of the West in Joseon during that era. The shift in Western perceptions of Joseon led to the initiation of Korean language studies and the development of Romanization systems.

This article starts with a thought that the ideas of ‘Eol’(soul) and ‘Gugeo’(national language) presuppose each other. Given that ancient history was the place of struggle in which the desires of a modern nation-state were projected, national language was an important tool of the struggle for nationalist historians such as Shin Chaeho and Jeong Inbo, who attempted to reveal the reality of ancient history. At the same time, the history of national language could only be established based on national history. In order to take a critical look at this entangling of ‘national history’ and ‘national language’, this article analyzed Jeong Inbo's “Joseon's Eol of 5,000 Years”. Chapter 2 examines the specific aspects of the linguistic methodology Jeong Inbo used in “Joseon's Eol of 5,000 Years” and its status in his research on Korean history. Chapter 3 reviews Jeong Inbo's approach to describing ancient history, which introduced a linguistic methodology, in the academic context of the time and show that it was an important tendency of ‘Joseonhak’(Korean Studies) that sought to eventually find "Something true to Korea." Chapter 4 examines the correlation between the ideas of ‘Eol’ and ‘Gugeo’, which originated from ‘Guksu’ and ‘Gukon’.