Visual History of Korea

Innovative visualizing of sounds in Korean Hunminjeongeum

Among many wonders of Korean history is the invention of its written language Hangeul in 1443, which is responsible for Korea's perfect literacy and world's largest reserve of vocabulary in Korean language.

"I pity my illiterate people who must endure difficulty and injustice because they lack literacy." wrote King Senjong the Great in his introduction to the Hunminjeongeum in the first part of the 9th month in 1443 in the lunar calendar. Hence Koreans celebrate the birth of its written language as the Hangeul Day holiday on October 9 each year.

Before the promulgation of Hangeul in 1443, Korean spoken vocabularies and the written Hanja words did not always match. For example water is called "mul" in Korean but written as "su" in Hanja characters.

King Sejong the Great invented a new phonetic writing system, the Hunminjeongeum, which enabled Koreans to write anything a person can say.

Hunminjeongeum is the original name for the Hangeul alphabet which enables visualization of the sounds into a written language as well as the name of the new language guide.

The functional written language has universal application enabling the user to visualize in words any sounds including sounds of nature.

Ju Sigyeong (1876 - 1914), one of the founders of modern Korean linguistics, popularized the use of the Hangeul to call the Hunminjeongum writing system after 1913." said Professor Kim Seul-ong, a Hangeul researcher and the author of 101 books (65 collaborations) including "Sejong the Great Hangeul." Kim holds three PhDs all from Hangeul research.

The majority of modern Korean Hangeul language grammar rules were solidified in the 20th century.

Among all languages of the world, the Korean Hangeul writing system is considered one of the most scientific if not the most scientific writing system.

Most people can learn the Hangeul alphabet in one day, and for some only a half-day to be able to read and write in Hangeul.

The consonants and vowels in the 1443 Hunminjeongeum book are rather graphic and visual. Their old letters look so modern fonts with their visual symmetry.

Back in the 15th century, official government business including laws governing contracts were written in Hanja words which was not easy for the largest group of population, the working people who lacked sophistication of Hanja-rooted vocabularies.

"King Sejong the Great defined his stated motivation to create, the purpose and the goal, not to mention the stated objective of the written language in the preface which is the main body of the book in the Hunminjeongeum. I discovered that there are 366 sentences in the Hunmingjeongum book, matching the number of days in the year. The original Hunminjeongeum mentions 30 consonants but shows 28, with 31 vowels including combined letters." said Profession Kim.

Modern Hangeul uses 24 consonants and 10 vowels.

"The unused original consonants have potential use for learning to pronounce foreign languages which have sounds not present in Korean language." said Kim.

The original sets of consonants and vowels were much more extensive than the 24 Hanguel language vowels and constants, to potentially pronounce difficult and strong-sounding words.

Literacy is essential for shared communications, and a successful team speaks in the same vocabulary, but around 1443, Korea's Joseon people spoke in different vocabularies.

During the more than five centuries of Joseon Kingdom (1392 - 1910), only the educated elite were literate in using the Hanja vocabularies while the working class spoke in indigenous Hangukmal vocabularies, who were not always literate in Hanja-rooted words.

Until foreign languages came into contact with Koreans, the Korean vocabulary was comprised of words indigenous to Korean people's spoken words and Hanja-rooted words.

King Taejong of Joseon, Yi Bang-won (1367 - 1422), the father of King Sejong the Great, labeled eight regions of Joseon into eight provinces, all speaking distinctive dialects. The Hunminjeongum unified written language for Korean culture.

When King Sejong the Great introduced 124 pure Korean words as an example of how the new written language was able to write words which people were speaking, Korean can finally write and read any words which were not possible using Hanja characters, the first written language of East Asia.

Despite King Sejong the Great's best efforts to have all the women in the Royal palace learn the new writing system, Hunminjeongum remained the main language of women and as a supplemental language to Hanja characters for scholars and elite class of Joseon for 451 years, until King Gojong, the last King of Joseon, declared it an official language of the land in 1864.

King Gojong's efforts were mostly ineffective as the bureaucracy and the ruling elite of Joseon Kingdom remained in their old ways as the 500-year old kingdom was struggling with foreign interferences seeking pieces of the ancient land, eventually becoming a colony of Japan by 1910.

While some prominent Josen scholars used Hangeul, including a seonbi named Kim Jeonng-hui (1786 - 1856) the famed calligrapher who wrote in Hangeul when he wrote letters to his wife asking for necessities and food he missed while serving time in exile trapped on Jeju island.

But it wasn't until 2005 when the Korean government passed a law making Hangeul the official mainstream language of the land.

North Koreans chose to have the Hangeul as their main written language in 1947 and parted way from using Hanja characters all together.

Korean newspapers which heavily used Hanja characters during most of the 20th century almost exclusively print in Hangeul language today.

Korean Hangeul language is a living ecosystem which is constantly evolving in the 21st century.

Today's Korean vocabulary contains extensive foreign words which have taken root in modern Korean culture, giving the Hangukmal the largest vocabulary of all known languages.

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