The History of Hangul

This content was taken from the book [ Learning Korean with a smile] .

Hangeul (한글, often written as Hangul) was completed in 1443 by a group of scholars under King Sejong the Great. 

They created the characters from research of ancient patterns based on an orthographic approach to the sounds of human voice. 

Before the creation of Hangeul, the majority of people such as farmers,fishers, hunters, butchers, craftsmen, or clothiers could not reand or write only menbers of the highest class were literate.

Despite the substantial difference between Korean and Mandarin, Chinese characters had been used to write Korean, which King Sejong observed as a cumbersome situation.

The help people read and write regardless of their age, gender, educatio level, or social position, King SEjong decided to create simple letters that anyone can learn.

King Sejong said: 

" Until now, we have not had letters proper for our language. I feel sorry for my people who cannot express their thoughts in writing. So I release 28 new letters myself. I name them 'HunMin Jeong Eum' ( 훈민정음: The proper Sounds for the Education of the people).  My people shall be able to learn them and use them every day "

Although Hangeul faced opposition by some of the literate elite after its creation ( possibly for fear of losing their superiority if everyone could read and write), it eventually entered popular culture as Sejong had intended, being used especially by oman and writers of popular fiction.

After Hangeul was released in 1446, it took more than 400 years until its first official usage. 

Hangeul was finally adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894. Elementary schoool texts bean using Hangeul in 1895. Korea, both South and North, now uses Hangeul as the sole official written language. 

As a concise and powerful writing system, Hangeul helps educate people to learn and write easily, and Korea has become one of the nations with the lowest illiteracy rate in the world. 

Hangeul is combinational; It can express 8800 sounds by combining 2~3 symbols to make a character while other alphabets have individual sounds for each symbol, only representing 300~400 sounds on average.

As interesting fact is theat the town of Bau-Bau in Sulawesi, Indonesia, selected Hangeul in 2009 to writhe the Cia-Cia language. Who knows, maybe Hangeul will become one of the universal phonetic languagees in the world !