High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Lee is the common English spelling of ? (Korean pronunciation: ), a common Korean family name. The proper pronunciation in South Korea is like the English letter "E", although in North Korea the name is still written as "?" and pronounced "Lee". Many times South Koreans will knowingly introduce themselves as "Lee" to foreigners even though this is not the proper pronunciation of their name. The more traditional spelling and therefore pronunciation of the name is the North Korean "?" (Lee). ? derived from the Chinese hanzi character Lee (?) (the Korean Hanja character is written the same way) ? is the second most common family name (after Kim) in Korea, with ? derived from ? or ? being relatively rare. The name is sometimes also transliterated as Yi (more commonly used in modern times when transliterating a given, rather than family, name) or Ri (North Korean), and was previously transliterated as Rhie or Rhee (Syngman Rhee is an example) for...