Asadal
Asadal, was the capital city of the kingdom of Old Chosŏn, the first Korean kingdom and notably founded by the legendary king Tan'gun. It is thought that Asadal was located in north-central Korea, in the western Hwanghae Province in modern North Korea or in the Pyongyang Province.
Etymology
The etymology of "Asadal" is uncertain. One hypothesis is that the word wikt:아사달 is a compound composed of two elements, asa + dal; this hypothesis is primarily motivated by an assumption of equivalence between the Chinese phonetic transcription Asīdá and the word wikt:조선 Joseon, another name for Korea. However, the etymology of 조선 Joseon is ultimately unknown, with opinions differing as to whether the word was created as a phonetic transcription or as a semantic calque. Furthermore, the reading of the Mandarin Chinese character in Cháoxian is identical to the reading when used to mean "dynasty," not with the reading when used to mean "morning".However, the character, which is used in modern Chinese languages mainly to represent the phonemes or in word-final and preconsonantal positions when transcribing foreign words, has always had a sibilant rather than an affricate like the Korean, and there are plenty of other characters better suited to transcribing the Korean sound. The second part, dal, might be the result of reading Chinese characters in the Korean way; if so, the original Chinese pronunciation at the time Asadal was recorded in historical texts could have been Asada, with the final syllable as a transcription of the Middle Korean word ᄯᅡᇂ〮, Early Modern Korean ᄯᅡ, Modern Korean 따 or 땅, meaning "land." In this case, Asadal would mean "Morning Land." If, however, the final syllable was used much like the Goryeo city-name suffix -dal, then Asadal would mean "Morning Mountain."
It also draws possible connections to the Japanese word "Asa " meaning "morning ". The modern Korean word for morning "Achim" is thought to have evolved from Middle Korean "Achom." Using Japanese Asa as a cognate, alongside the aforementioned theories, it can be deduced that "Asadal" most likely meant "Morning Land" or "Morning Mountain".
In fact, up until the Yamato Kingdom changed its name from "Wakoku " to "Nihon ", ancient Korean kingdoms such as Paekche had used the same characters "Ilbon ", literally meaning "Land where the sun rises" when it colloquially addressed itself, seeming to have carried over the meaning of "Morning Land" from Asadal.