George McAfee "Mac" McCune (; June 16, 1908 – November 5, 1948) was an American scholar of Korea who developed the McCune–Reischauer romanization system of Korean with Edwin O. Reischauer. He taught Korean history and language at Occidental College and the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Born in Pyongyang, Korea, George McAfee McCune was the son of Helen McAfee and George Shannon McCune, American Presbyterian educational missionaries who had sailed to the country in 1905. Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910. The McCunes worked in Pyongyang and Sinch'ŏn. The young George had a younger brother, Shannon, and two sisters, Catherine and Margaret. They received their elementary educations in Korea. McCune moved to the United States to attend Huron College in South Dakota, where his father was president, and after a year transferred to Rutgers University in New Jersey. He graduated from Occidental College with a bachelor's degree in 1930. McCune returned to Korea for a few years, and taught at Union Christian College in Pyongyang, where his parents were working. He also owned and managed Taeon, a formerly Chinese-owned business, which enabled him to finance his graduate education. McCune returned to the US and completed his MA at Occidental College in 1935. He started doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley. He was granted a Mills Traveling Fellowship to continue his studies in Korea. He spent a year working on the official Yi dynasty chronicles in connection with his dissertation. In 1941, he received his PhD from Berkeley. In 1939, he and Edwin O. Reischauer, also an East Asian scholar, published their McCune-Reischauer romanization of the Korean language, which was widely used for decades. Marriage and family He married Evelyn Margaret Becker (1907-2012) in Honolulu, Hawaii, on April 22, 1933. She was a child of American Methodist missionary parents and also had been born in Pyongyang. They had met there while both were visiting their respective families. She was teaching at the Seoul Foreign School in Seoul, Korea, after getting her BA at University of California, Berkeley. They became engaged and then married during a crisis because of McCune's health problems; his heart had been weakened by the rheumatic fever that he suffered from as a child. Their daughters, Helen Louise McCune and Heather McAfee McCune, were born respectively in 1934 and 1939. Career McCune began teaching Korean language and history at Occidental College, where