THIS MONTH IN KOREAN HISTORY - Oct 2025
History of Written Language in Korea
By Sharon Stern
October 9 in South Korea is the public holiday Hangeul Day. It is celebrated on January 15 in North Korea, where it is known as Choseongeul Day. The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China, where there is a significant Korean diaspora, celebrates The Day of the Korean Language on September 2.
Hangeul is the unique alphabet used to write the Korean language. Its creation is celebrated as a major accomplishment in Korean history. We will take a look at where Hangeul came from and why it is significant for representing the Korean language. In order to do that, we start with the earliest written representations of the Korean language.
Statue of King Sejong in Gwanghwamun, Seoul
Ancient Korean – Prior to around 668 AD
reenacment of Civil Servant Exam
Korean was already spoken on the peninsula and was the dominant language before 700 AD. Before this period, there are historic records indicating that Korea had several languages, including one related to an ethnic group that is present on one of the Japanese islands. The Samguk Sagi, which is a record from the Three Kingdoms era (approx. 100-668 AD), indicates there were similarly pronounced, but distinct Chinese characters for things at that time. The general term for using Chinese characters used in writing in Korea is called hanja, although hanja is also used to specifically refer to Korean words of Chinese origin. Only a few hanja characters were originally modified to be uniquely Korean and hanja has not undergone significant reforms from traditional Chinese characters. Hanja was used in the early gwageo, which was the civil service exam, which was a concept borrowed from the Chinese, and it required proficiency in reading and writing Chinese to be able to comprehend and pass the exam.
During the Three Kingdoms period of Korea, an attempt was made to modify Classic Chinese characters to be able to write the Korean language. This was the beginning of what is now known as hanja. This first modification of Chinese was called the Idu script. The idu script included Korean sounds that used Chinese characters, but used them only for their pronunciation and not for their original, symbolic meaning. Chinese documents were translated into the idu script so that Korean scholars could understand them better.
Old Korean – approximately 668-900 AD
During this period, most Korean texts were written in Chinese. Chinese had a writing system, but Korean did not. Chinese characters were used in two ways. Sometimes they were used for their meaning, sometimes they were used for a sound they represented and many times they were used for both at the same time. This makes reading Old Korean really difficult. It isn’t immediately clear if the character is meant to be read with its Chinese symbolic meaning or with a pronunciation that sounds like Korean. Today’s scholars that try to decipher Old Korean writings from this time period need to study both Korean and Chinese for decades in order to even attempt to unravel meanings.
Because Chinese writing was so important to transcribing Korean at this time and because there was no writing system specifically for Korean, there are a large number of borrowed Chinese words in Korean even today. A lot of this influence is believed to have entered into the Korean language between 600-1200 AD. Even though Korean words might be based on Chinese words, pronunciation of Chinese went through several large changes over time and so a word today that originated from Chinese might not sound the same in Chinese and Korean.
The Hyangchal (향찰) writing system was introduced during this time (during the Goryeo and unified Silla periods). Hyangchal was a modification of the idu script that used Korean word order (subject-object-verb – unlike Chinese) and more Korean phonetic interpretations were given to Chinese characters. This allowed entire Korean sentences to be written using Chinese characters. The first records of its use were poems written by Buddhist monks.
Early Middle Korean – 900-1443
This period in the language’s history is really divided into two periods: Early Middle Korean and Middle Korean. Early Middle Korean followed a similar pattern, using Chinese characters to either represent an entire Korean word or a sound in Korean. This extended modification of the use of Chinese characters to write Korean was called Gugyeol (구결). Gugyeol was different than idu and hyangchal because it used special markings along with the Chinese characters to indicate specific Korean grammar points so that Korean readers could more easily understand.
Middle Korean – 1443-1600
Everything changed completely when King Sejong came into power. He ruled Korea from 1418 until his death in 1450. He is responsible for creating the Hangeul alphabet. We will talk more about King Sejong’s legacy and the creation of Hangeul below. The significance of Korea having its own writing system cannot be overemphasized. This moment in history changed the underlying cultural structure of the country in many ways.
The Middle Korean era ended around 1600 AD, after the Imjin War of 1592 and 1598, when Japan invaded Korea. This period brought a lot of chaos to the peninsula and it took time for the country to reorganize and recover.
Modern Korean – 1600-Present
The Modern Korean era is generally agreed to have begun after the reorganization of Korea, following the Imjin War. Two types of structured poetry called gasa and sijo written in Hangeul were very popular starting at this time and novels written in Hangeul also became widely available and popular.
Songmiyingok, Gasa written by Jung Cheol.
Western missionaries helped promote education in Hangeul in the late 1800s. Official documents and education materials for schools were adopted to Hangeul at the end of the 1800s. Small modifications to the alphabet continued during Japanese occupation, into the 1930s.
However, Japan outlawed the use of the Korean language in 1938, with the beginnings of this oppression starting in 1936. It became illegal to speak Korean in public or to possess books written in Hangeul. The Korean Language Society, which had been formed in 1908 to promote the exclusive use of Hangeul in Korea, continued its work on the rules of orthography in Hangeul in secret, as well as creating a dictionary that included differences in regional dialects in the language. After an incident at a high school in 1942 that brought attention to their work, members of the Korean Language Society were arrested and tortured and most spent a number of years in prison.
At the end of the war and Korea’s independence from occupation, a modern Hangeul dictionary and orthographic alphabet was published quickly.
In 2009, Hangeul was unofficially adopted in Sulawesi, Indonesia to write the Cia-Cia language. The first Cia-Cia dictionary in Hangeul was published in 2021.
King Sejong the Great
King Sejong the Great. He is memorialized on Korea’s 10,000 won bill. During his reign, Joseon had many scientific and technical advances.
King Sejong was the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty. He is widely considered the greatest king of the 500+ years of the Joseon Dynasty. King Sejong’s reign has been described as the Golden Age of Korean history and could be likened, in many ways, to the European Renaissance. King Sejong was personally involved in most, if not all, of the reforms that were implemented and was considered a very wise and compassionate ruler.
He firmly established (it had existed earlier, but only became significant once King Sejong re-established it) the Hall of Worthies. This was a group of scholars with expertise in science, medicine, agriculture, the arts, the Classical Chinese language, Confucian texts, precepts and ideals. It served as a kind of advisory board to the king.
One of the most lasting and significant developments during King Sejong’s reign was the creation of the Hangeul alphabet. When King Sejong was inventing Hangeul, the Ming had just come into power in China and they changed the pronunciation of Chinese characters. This was a real problem for Koreans who had already spent centuries trying to modify Chinese characters to accurately transcribe Korean.
In addition, Korea had a strict class system. Only the upper class, yangban, had the time and resources to learn Chinese and its hanja adaptations. The common class, sangmin, which comprised the majority of Koreans, were illiterate. King Sejong wanted to change that. He wanted people to be able to express their grievances as well as to better comprehend Confucian ideals by reading them. There is some evidence that it was frustrating to try to capture uniquely Korean plants and animals using Chinese character phonetic adaptations. They all had words in Korean, but there was no way to accurately catalogue them in writing. Creating a unique alphabet specifically for the Korean language was the solution. We will look at the creation of the letters and their logic below.
The Joseon Dynasty did an amazing job of documenting what happened inside and outside of the palace during each king’s reign. The Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty are believed to be the longest continual record of any single dynasty in the world. Despite that amazing fact, the details of exactly who created the Hangeul alphabet are still hotly debated. The Veritable Records credit Hangeul as “His Majesty’s invention.” It is believed that the alphabet was created mostly in secret, so whoever was involved was probably a small group of people, at most. It is conjectured that King Sejong might have had help from a few of the scholars in the Hall of Worthies. Whoever touched the alphabet’s creation, it is certain that King Sejong was extremely and personally involved.
Hunminjeongeum, the manuscript of Hangeul.
It is believed that the creation of Hangeul was begun in secret in 1443. In 1446 and 1447, three books on the alphabet were published. The books were called Hunminjeongeum (훈민정음); which loosely translated mean “Correct/Proper Sounds to Instruct the People”. This was the introduction of the alphabet and it was initially the name of the alphabet as well. The name Hangeul didn’t really come about until the 20th Century. The first book, the Hunminjeongeum Yeui, was a Hanja version of the dictionary, explaining each of the letters. The second book, the Hunminjeongeum Haerye, was an illustrated explanation of the alphabet. An original copy of the Hunminjeongeum Haerye is housed in the Kansong Art Museum in Seoul. The third book, the Hunminjeongeum Eonhae, was the Hangeul version of the Hunminjeongeum Yeui. These books were compiled by the Hall of Worthies as instructed by King Sejong.
The following year, a rhyme dictionary was printed called the Tongguk chŏngun (동국정운). A rhyme dictionary is a dictionary that describes words by their tone, which was common for Chinese because it was a tonal language. It is not clear if Old and Middle Korean were tonal languages. But because one of the problems with using Chinese to write Korean was the difficulty in capturing the sounds of Korean, a rhyming dictionary for the new alphabet made sense. An original copy of the Tongguk Chongun is house at the Museum of Konkuk University in Seoul.
The creation of Hangeul was not without controversy during King Sejong’s reign. The Joseon courts were well known for factional fighting. In the Veritable Records for Sejong's reign, the anti-Hangeul faction lays out their arguments. They believed that the script went against the Confucian traditions that had their origins in China and therefore should be expressed in Chinese. They simultaneously did not like King Sejong’s tolerance of Buddhism and some thought that there could have been influence from Buddhist monks in the creation of the alphabet. They also believed that making the common class of people literate would upset the balance of the Confucian system, though that could probably be attributed to the elite believing they would lose some of their power if everyone could read.
The Hangeul Alphabet
The Parts of an Alphabet
Cheonjamun, the book of thousand Chinese Characters to teach the Children. Korean meanings were ascribed to each characters.
Chinese is a logographic language. A logogram represents both a phonetic aspect of a word as well as an idea or concept. Most logograms represent an entire word or at least a word root. Logograms are not directly linked to phonetics, however. Because of these distinct pieces to a logogram, logographic languages are processed differently in the brain than languages with purely phonetic representations. Using Classic Chinese logograms makes it possible for modern Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese to understand each other in written language, but not spoken language.
Non-logographic languages use phonetic pieces to assemble representations of words. Segments are usually the smallest breakdowns (easiest to think of as letters, divided by consonants and vowels). Then come morphemes (easiest to think of as word roots) and syllables (easiest to think of as sound divisions or groupings in words).
The fact that Chinese logograms did not align with the segments or morphemes of spoken Korean made their use in writing the language awkward.
The Process of Creating the Letters of Hangeul
The letters of Hangeul were grouped together by the sounds they represent and the parts of the body that make those sounds. Related sounds have letters that are graphically related to each other. The shapes of the basic consonants were created to show the position taken by the mouth, tongue, teeth, throat, lips in making the sounds. There is an entire dictionary of words related to phonics that describes the position of the mouth, tongue, teeth, throat, lips for making sounds. We won’t dig into a phonics lesson, but because of the Chinese logographic lack of direct connection to sound, trying to represent the sounds of the Korean language with Chinese characters didn’t work very well. Hangeul set about to rectify that.
The modern Hangeul alphabet consists of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. There are 27 complex letters formed by combining the basic letters: 5 tense consonants, 11 complex final consonants, 11 complex vowels.
The following comes directly from the Hangeul National Museum and it describes the five basic consonants and three basic vowels better than we could do by trying to describe them ourselves:
The Principle of Hangeul
Among the 28 characters that make up Hunminjeongeum, there are 5 basic consonants: ㄱ, ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅅ, ㅇ, and 3 basic vowels: ㆍ, ㅡ, ㅣ. The remaining characters are created by adding strokes to these 8 basic characters or by combining them.
The 5 basic consonants were designed based on the shape of the human vocal organs. The letter ㄱ, which represents a velar sound, is modeled after the shape of the tongue blocking the throat. The letter ㄴ, representing an alveolar sound, is shaped after the tongue touching the upper gums. The bilabial sound letter ㅁ reflects the shape of the mouth or lips. The dental sound letter ㅅ is modeled after the shape of the teeth, and the glottal sound letter ㅇ is based on the shape of the throat. By adding strokes to these 5 basic consonant characters depending on the intensity of the sound, a total of 17 consonant characters were created. For example, from the basic consonant ㄴ[n], a stronger sound is represented by ㄷ[d], and an even stronger sound by ㅌ[t].
The 3 basic vowels were created based on the shapes representing heaven (ㆍ), earth (ㅡ), and human (ㅣ). The remaining letters were formed by combining these basic vowels. For example, by placing a ㆍ on either side of ㅣ, the vowels ㅏ and ㅓ were created, and by placing a ㆍ above or below ㅡ, the vowels ㅗ and ㅜ were created. Similarly, by attaching one more ㆍ to ㅣ and ㅡ, the vowels ㅑ, ㅕ, ㅛ, and ㅠ were formed. In this way, a total of 11 vowel characters were made. Thus, Hangeul was created as a system that extends a minimal number of basic characters into a regular pattern, making it easy to learn and efficient to use.
The design of Hangeul is beautiful. It is compact. It is logical. It is progressive, as strokes are added to letters for related sounds. And the philosophy behind the creation of the vowels puts emphasis on the importance of language. Hangeul is different than a character-based alphabet like the Latin alphabet used for English, where the shapes of the letters have no relationship to their sounds. The letters of Hangeul are combined into blocks of characters to create syllables, which is another simple design feature that makes its use and interpretation clear. Some people have called Hangeul the most perfect phonetic system ever devised. UNESCO called it a “masterpiece of human creative genius.” In fact, UNESCO annually awards the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize to honor King Sejong’s legacy of literacy by creating Hangeul. Any creation that can make an entire population literate is a truly amazing thing. A single day is not enough to honor both this contribution by King Sejong and the beauty and value of the alphabet itself!
Further Reading
The Hangeul Alphabet
https://www.nfm.go.kr/k-box/ui/annyeong/hangeul.do?lang=en
https://www.koreanculture.org/gallery-korea/2024/04/07/hangeul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_Hangeul
https://thesciencesurvey.com/spotlight/2025/07/03/Hangeul-koreas-unique-alphabet/
https://blog.duolingo.com/history-of-korean-language/
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2013/10/08/how-was-Hangeul-invented
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hangeul-Korean-alphabet
https://www.korean.go.kr/eng_hangeul/principle/001.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunminjeongeum_Haerye
https://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/HonoraryReporters/view?articleId=255394&pageIndex=1
https://www.koreanvalley.com/hangeul-blog/history-of-hangeul
https://sensemaster.tistory.com/entry/The-History-of-Hangeul-How-the-Korean-Alphabet-Was-Created
http://learn-Hangeul.com/home/the-history-of-Hangeul/
https://gogohanguk.com/en/blog/hangul-the-korean-alphabet/
https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/66133111314/why-the-korean-alphabet-is-brilliant
King Sejong and His Legacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_King_Sejong_Literacy_Prize
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejong_the_Great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritable_Records_of_Sejong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangeul_Day
https://everythingkorea.blog/2025/03/16/the-history-and-significance-of-Hangeul-day/
Movies and Dramas
Movies
The Divine Weapon – 신기전 – 2008 – Not currently streaming
I Am the King - 나는 왕이로소이다 – 2012 – Not currently streaming
Forbidden Dream - 천문: 하늘에 묻는다 – 2019 – Streaming on Prime and Viki
The King’s Letters – 나랏말싸미 – 2019 – Streaming on Plex TV. This movie is a little controversial, though it stars Song Kang-ho (Parasite, A Taxi Driver) and is a very good movie because it shows the influence of Buddhist monks in the creation of Hangeul, which historians do not believe is accurate and actually believe was an idea propagated to slander King Sejong.
Mal-Mo-E: The Secret Mission – 말모이 – 2019 – Streaming on Viki – Tells the story of the Korean Language Society during Japanese Occupation
Dramas
The Great King, Sejong - 대왕 세종 – 2008 – Streaming on tract.tv
Tree With Deep Roots - 뿌리 깊은 나무 – 2011 – Streaming on Viki
Jang Yeong Shil – 장영실 – 2016 – Not currently streaming
