question on an ebay item (korean box)

[GoktimusPrime]

GoktimusPrime: Really?, so Sonokong is the South Korean name for The Monkey King and Son Gokuu is the Japanese name?.

Yup. Works like this:

Japanese...
孫 (そん) = son
悟 (ご) = go
空 (くう) = kuu

Korean...
孫 (손) = son
悟 (오) = o
空 (공) = kong

I actually find this very interesting as I was unaware that the story had travelled so far (South Korea), though I knew that Goku and a lot of other elements of Dragonball/Z were drawn from The Monkey King story but to what extent or whether the story had been translated and told to Japanese children I didn't know.

The story of Journey to the West is very well known across Asia, not just in China. The Japanese and Koreans are quite familiar with this story, just as most Westerners would be familiar with classical Greek epics like the Odyssey.

Even many Australians know of the story, thanks to BBC's version of the Japanese production known as "Monkey."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRIqYC12liM (I love singing the opening and ending themes at Karaoke )

Also, it does make sense to me that Takara would have a subsidiary distributor in such nations as South Korea, though I was unbeknown-st to Sonokong.

Thank you very much much for clarifying and educating me on this, the collective knowledge of this forum and it's members is very pleasing to me.

Getting somewhat back on topic, I don't think Sonokong distributes Transformers in Korea anymore. They used to during Beast Wars and Car Robot, but I'm not sure who's distributing TFs in the Korean market these days. Although the toys distributed by Sonokong were of the same quality as Takara there were some other issues with things like tech spec cards, sticker applications etc. -- but the figures themselves are fine.