A question

[Kerim Friedman]

Although I am not a language historian, I think is important to realize that folk etemologies are often very reasonable on face value - but not necessarily "true" as such. Yes, "gok" in Korean, means "country" in the same way that "guo" does in Mandarin Chinese. The Chinese for America is "Mei-Guo." However, the OED dates the term to before the Korean War, with a 1935 attribution to Filipinos or Spanish speakers (see OED quote below). This suggests that the existence of the phonology "gok" in Korean does not actually have a historical relationship to the term "gook" in English.

kerim

gook.
slang (orig. and chiefly U.S.).
[Origin unknown.]
Used as a term of contempt: a foreigner; spec. a coloured inhabitant of (south-)east Asia or elsewhere. Also attrib. or as adj.
1935 Amer. Speech X. 79/1 Gook, anyone who speaks Spanish, particularly a Filipino.
1947 N.Y. Herald Tribune 2 Apr. 28/6 The American troops..don't like the Koreans whom they prefer to call "Gooks" and, in the main, they don't like Korea.
1951 D. Cusack Say no to Death xix. 109 The fur coat she wore must have cost her black-marketeer husband the best part of a thousand. He had seen ones like it in Tokyo when the Gooks were selling them for what they could get.
1953 New Yorker 7 Mar. 23/1 You'll notice it's not a gook car.
1959 R. Kirkbride Tamiko iii. 17 Ivan looked at the..Jap... "You get back to work, gook," he said.
1959 N. Mailer Advts. for Myself (1961) 132 Miguel, he said a lot, but I just can't follow that Gook talk.
1968 Guardian 23 Feb. 11/3 The Gooks [sc. Viet Cong] hit from bunkers and the Marines had to carry half the company back.
1969 Sunday Mail Mag. (Brisbane) 6 July 4/2 This is a gook grave
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P. KERIM FRIEDMAN
			Anthropology, Temple University
			<mailto:kerim.friedman at oxus.net>
			<http://kerim.oxus.net>
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