If you cite Korean (or Chinese or Japanese) names, please write them correct. There is no Hyun-Tak Kim, he is called Kim Hyun-Tak. Likewise Kwon Young-Wan.
In Korean it's trivial to detect, in Chinese not so, in Japanese very hard.
These are just how they wrote their own names in arXiv papers [1]. I don't know about Young-Wan Kwon, but Hyun-Tak Kim is a research professor in US university and should have settled on that matter.
After all I'm also Korean and I prefer my name to be written as "Kang Seonghoon" (i.e. the surname first), but I often go pragmatic and use "Seonghoon Kang" instead in order to be consistent with others. I'm very much aware of this issue.
Ouch. This comment backfired quite badly. Turns out the person being replied to is Korean, the commenter is likely not, and in addition this is how the authors wrote their names themselves.
Yet I do not wish this comment to be snarky. I’m interested in the broader perspective (and I apologize in advance to the parent for using this as an hook). The comment seems common of the present era in which polarization (leading to prejudice against anyone we believe is outside our in-group), and short attention span (leading to drive by/poorly researched comments), combine to low empathy among us. And just to be clear, I’m not putting myself above this, on a bad day this kind of comment could have come from me.
Am I right and things were better on the past on the empathy axis? Or am I exaggerating and getting old?
You never write cjk names with firstname first, always surname first. Japanese usually complain, the others just shake their heads silently about the silly westerners.
When the original author writes his/her name american style he/she moved to america, but then he/she changed his firstname also.
In this case some citations may started out wrong, as journalists have no idea how to write foreign names, scientists and experts usually do.
the commenter knows how write foreign names, even if some author succumbed to western stupidity.
That's not the issue, though, the issue is staunchly defending something on behalf of some other group. It's noble, but it sometimes backfires because the group itself doesn't even care that much about the thing being defended.
It reminds me of the time that I got reprimanded at work for saying I'll "wear a rainbow scarf" together with a gay coworker and friend, when the coworker didn't even see what could be offensive in the statement.
I think we're sort of climbing out of a local maximum of entropy. It's gotten better in some ways and worse at others. It'll take some time for everything to settle out.
It's not difficult to detect in Japanese either, because the set of names used for personal and surnames are different. However, both Japanese and non-Japanese alike don't follow any consistent order when writing their names in English, so neither is 'correct'. In fact it could be called a hypercorrection, similarly to using '-san' when addressing Japanese people in English.
It's also easy for chinese names when you know the very limited number of possible surnames. But then you must assume the citator knows some chinese, which they don't.
Japanese is a bit harder as their firstnames are written in myriads of western styles. (e.g. Miu, Miyu, Miyuu, Miju, ... a common female firstname, for "Beauty, Gentleness & Superiority". Mi=Beautiful, Yu=Gentleness, Superiority). Also Miyu can be written in myriads of ways in japanese, with only some being the common female firstname, where yu can also mean Bind, Friend, Eternal, Dream, To exist, Yuzu (a lemon), Sorrow, ...
You need to persist on consistent ordering, even if westerners have no idea and continue ignoring it. Even if everybody writes Itō Mima as Mima Ito, she is still Itō Mima.
The prominent Wang Manyu and other chinese table tennis players did establish their correct writing, they just call her Wang Manyu instead of Wang Manyü ("man-yue"), which is equally embarrasing.
You insist on correct gendering, but still write the names wrong.
Japanese people with Western spouses (e.g. Keiko Jackson), or who are popular overseas (Marie Kondo) or have spent a lot of time overseas may prefer to use the Western ordering.
Even people who live in Japan may prefer to use Western ordering when talking in English. Insisting on their own order rather than adapting to others is pretty un-Japanese imo.
So instead of learning one fact (x country uses family-given ordering) the reader must learn 1000 facts (whether y name is a family name or given name) about a language they don't know so they can infer which ordering the translation is using.
In Korean it's trivial to detect, in Chinese not so, in Japanese very hard.