Was ‘jjajangmyeon’ once considered incorrect Korean?

Jjajangmyeon combines the Chinese dish name 炸醬 (fried bean sauce) with ‘myeon’ (麵, noodles). In Chinese, 炸醬 is pronounced zhajiang, and the Chinese table in Korea's loanword spelling rules writes zh as ㅈ (j). So it was spelled ‘jajang’ (자장), and the standard pronunciation followed the letters as [jajang].

The problem was that almost everyone said ‘jjajangmyeon’ (짜장면). Menus and signs used it too, while only broadcasters carefully read it as ‘jajangmyeon’ on air.

Jjamppong (짬뽕), another dish on Korean Chinese restaurant menus, was written with a tense consonant from the beginning. The loanword rules say established loanwords keep their customary form, and jjamppong was already in the dictionary that way. Jjajangmyeon was also recognized as a word long settled in everyday speech, so it became usable alongside the old form in 2011.

Words such as ‘meokgeori’ (먹거리, food), ‘maennal’ (맨날, every day), and ‘taekkyeon’ (택견, a traditional martial art) became standard at the same time, adding 39 entries in all.

Many people think that once ‘jjajangmyeon’ became standard, ‘jajangmyeon’ turned incorrect. But a multiple standard form keeps both the original and the new word, so ‘jajangmyeon’ is still standard. The institute still answers that both spellings can be used, and either one is fine in textbooks and official documents. 택견 and 태껸 (both read taekkyeon), and 품새 and 품세 (pumsae and pumse) were accepted together in the same way.

That does not mean every loanword said with a tense sound changed. ‘Donkkaseu’ (돈까스, pork cutlet), common on menus, is still standard only as ‘dongaseu’ (돈가스), and ‘kkape’ (까페) is still written ‘kape’ (카페, café). That is why a spell checker leaves 짜장면 alone but flags 돈까스. The loanword rules as a whole did not change; only a few long-settled words like jjajangmyeon were accepted separately. When in doubt, look the word up in the Standard Korean Language Dictionary.