History
A page from the
Hunmin Jeong-eum. The Hangul-only column, fourth from left, ([FONT=은]나랏말ᄊᆞ미[/FONT]), has pitch-accent diacritics to the left of the syllable blocks.
Hangul was promulgated by the fourth king of the
Joseon Dynasty,
Sejong the Great. The
Hall of Worthies is often credited for the work, but records show that his staff of scholars denounced the king for not having consulted with them. King Sejong may have worked in secret, possibly with other members of the royal family, because of the opposition by the educated elite.
The project was completed in late 1443 or early 1444, and published in 1446 in a document titled
Hunmin Jeongeum ("The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People"), after which the alphabet itself was named. The publication date of the
Hunmin Jeong-eum, October 9, became
Hangul Day in
South Korea. Its
North Korean equivalent is on January 15.
Various speculations about the creation process was put to rest by the discovery in 1940 of the 1446
Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye ("
Hunmin Jeong-eum Explanation and Examples"). This document explains the design of the consonant letters according to
articulatory phonetics and the vowel letters according to the principles of
yin and yang and
vowel harmony.
King Sejong explained that he created the new script because the Korean language was different from Chinese; using Chinese characters (known as
Hanja) to write was so difficult for the common people that only the male aristocrats
(yangban) could read and write fluently. (A few female members of the royal family could also do so to a certain extent). The majority of Koreans were effectively illiterate before Hangul's invention.
Hangul was designed so that even a commoner could learn to read and write; the
Haerye says "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."
[3]
Hangul faced heavy opposition by the literate elite, such as
Choe Manri and other
Confucian scholars in the 1440s, who believed hanja to be the only legitimate writing system. Later rulers too became hostile to Hangul.
Yeonsangun, the 10th king, forbade the study or use of Hangul and banned Hangul documents in 1504, and
King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of
Eonmun in 1506. Even before these official actions, Hangul had been principally used by women and the undereducated.
The 16th century saw a revival of Hangul, with
gasa literature and later
sijo flourishing. In the 17th century, Hangul novels became a major genre.
[4]
Due to growing
Korean nationalism in the 19th century, Japan's attempt to sever Korea from China's
sphere of influence, and the
Gabo Reformists' push, Hangul was eventually adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894. Elementary school texts began using Hangul in 1895, and the
Dongnip Sinmun, established in 1896, was one of the first newspapers printed exclusively in Hangul.
[5]
After Korea was
annexed by Japan in 1910, Hangul was initially taught in Japanese-established schools,
[6] and Korean was written in a mixed Hanja-Hangul script, where most lexical roots were written in Hanja and grammatical forms in Hangul. However, the Korean language was banned from schools in 1938 as part of a policy of
cultural assimilation,
[7] and all Korean-language publications were outlawed in 1941.
[8]
Hangul orthography was standardized by an academic group led by
Ju Sigyeong in publications such as the
Standardized System of Hangul in
1933, and a system for transliterating foreign orthographies was published in 1940.
Since regaining independence from Japan in 1945, the Koreas have used Hangul or mixed Hangul as their sole official writing system, with ever-decreasing use of hanja. Since the 1950s, it has become uncommon to find hanja in commercial or unofficial writing in the South, with some South Korean newspaper only using hanja as abbreviations or disambiguation of homonyms. There has been widespread debate as to the future of Hanja in South Korea, and the number of characters taught in schools has fallen from ? in 1956 to 1,800 in the 1990s. North Korea reinstated Hangul as its exclusive writing system in 1949, and banned the use of Hanja completely.