"gook" (rhymes with "book")

[sagehen]

Leaving aside "gook" and all the other /-oo-/ words -- like roof & root --
that can go either way, I find that /k/ seems to be the most U-inspiring
letter of the alphabet. I can come up off the top of my head with about 40
/-oo-/ words  that sound the vowel as in "food." Only one of them ("spook")
has a /k/.
Of the 16  I can think of  with  the vowel of "good," 11 have a /k/.
That being so, I wonder why it never occurred to me that "gook" (a word
only known to me as an ethnic slur from the VietNam days) would be
pronounced  as anything but /guk/, like "spook."
A. Murie