Korean on a Chinese-Only Tablet

The Lenovo Legion Y700 Gen 4 ships with a Chinese ROM. Not a "Chinese as the default language" ROM. A ROM where Korean doesn't exist.

You can go to Settings, tap Language, pick Korean, and what you get is not Korean. You get Chinese. The system tries to load Korean strings, finds nothing, falls back to the default resource bundle, which is Mandarin. English works because Lenovo included an English string table. Korean, Japanese, and most other languages simply aren't compiled into the firmware.

The Settings app will happily let you select Korean. It just won't do what you asked.

Why ADB alone can't fix this

The first thing I tried was the obvious ADB approach:

adb shell settings put system system_locales "ko-KR,en-US"

This writes ko-KR to the system locale database, and the value sticks. You can read it back and confirm it's there. But after a reboot, the UI is still Chinese. The problem isn't the locale setting. The problem is that the ROM's /system partition doesn't contain values-ko/ resource directories. You're telling Android to speak a language it was never taught.

The fallback chain goes: ko-KR (missing) → default resources (Chinese). Not English. Chinese. Because the CN ROM's unqualified values/ directory is Mandarin, and that's what Android falls back to when the requested locale has no matching strings.

The actual solution: root + region conversion

The fix requires two things: root access to install a system-level module, and a module that overlays ROW (rest-of-world) resources onto the CN firmware.

Root without unlocking the bootloader. The TB322FC's firmware is signed with a publicly known AOSP test key. A tool called LTBox exploits this: it patches init_boot.img with KernelSU, re-signs it with the same test key, and flashes it via Qualcomm's EDL (Emergency Download) mode. The bootloader stays locked. It trusts the image because the signature matches.

CN to ROW conversion. A Magisk/KernelSU module called DeZUX does the heavy lifting. It overlays ROW-region system resources, swaps the region identifier from PRC to ROW, debloats 23 CN-specific apps, and renames the device from its Chinese product name to "Legion Tab Y700." After a reboot, the system behaves as if it's running global firmware. Korean is there. So is every other language that Lenovo ships on the international variant.

The procedure

The whole process, on a Windows machine with ADB already set up:

1. Download LTBox and extract it. The EDL programmer file (xbl_s_devprg_ns.melf) needs to come from the stock firmware package — LTBox doesn't bundle it. I pulled mine from TB322FC_S200001_2506121310_250612_PRC.7z.
2. Run start.bat, select Root → KernelSU Next (LKM) → Stable → Extract from device. LTBox handles the ADB → Fastboot → EDL chain automatically, patches init_boot, re-signs vbmeta, and flashes both back.
3. After reboot, open the KernelSU Next manager (auto-installed by LTBox), go to Modules, install DeZUX-v1.0.3.6.zip from local storage, and reboot again.
4. Set the locale: adb shell settings put system system_locales "ko-KR,en-US", reboot one final time.

Three reboots total. The last one comes up in Korean.

Post-setup housekeeping

A few things to lock down after the conversion:

• Disable OTA updates. A system update would overwrite the patched init_boot and vbmeta, killing both root and the region overlay. I disabled com.lenovo.ota via ADB and set software_update_enabled to 0.
• Never re-lock the bootloader. Multiple reports on XDA of permanent bricks from re-locking after any modification. The device stays in fastboot mode with no recovery path. Don't touch it.
• Keep the init_boot backup. LTBox saves the original init_boot.img before patching. If something goes wrong later, you can flash it back via EDL to return to stock.

What changed

The tablet now runs Korean system UI, Korean keyboard, Korean app store descriptions, and falls back to English for anything that doesn't have a Korean translation. Which is what a global ROM does out of the box — except Lenovo hasn't released one for the Gen 4 yet.

The Y700 Cleaner tool I wrote earlier for the three-reader loadout still works alongside DeZUX. The cleaner handles a different set of packages, focused on Lenovo telemetry and unused ZUI apps, while DeZUX handles the region and resource overlay. They don't conflict.