Invention of Hangul
Hello Guys~ Do you know what day is today? October 9th is the Hangul Day! Today is the day to commemorate the invention of Hangul and to give appreciation to King Sejong who spent his life to invent language from scratch.
Hangul is something that people all around the world consider as something significant, innovative and (well it is informal but) cool. It is because Hangul could literally pronounce the words or the sound. It is because of the vowels and consonants being flexible. With Hangul, you could pronounce or even write in Korean what we hear. It is also considered significant since it is registered in UNESCO.
HOWEVER, it is not appreciated as much as it should be! K-pop songs include English or English words and concurrent people create “internet language” to use instead of using beautiful words given for us to use. Before this gets too serious, I like to discuss invention of Hangul.
Oct 9th, the day where people commemorate the invention of Hangul and show appreciation to King Sejong.
Hangul, Hoon Min Jung Eum and Korean language… what do you think of them? Let me rephrase this. Do you know what Hangul is? or Hoon Min Jung Eum is?
I bet not many of you will recognize these two words. These two words are Korean languages: Hangul, 한글 and Hoon Min Jung Eum,훈민정음. If those two words are Korean languages what is the difference? The difference between these two are very simple. One is 1st edition and the another is 2nd edition.
Hangul is like 2nd edition book. Koreans use Hangul to communicate. It is formed with 21 vowels, 14 consonants, and 5 double constants. In order to form the word or letter, at least one vowel and consonants required. With these alphabets, various combinations of words could be made. Hoon Min Jung Eum is the 1st edition of Hangul. To put it simple, Hangul is modified language of Hoon Min Jung Eum.
Going back to main idea, can you believe if there is GRSJ issues behind invention of Hangul/ Hoon Min Jung Eum?
To start with, the time we are going back to is Chosun Dynasty. . Chosun is the last dynasty which the king ruled the country. The time is set to 1418 to 1450 when SeJong the Great ruled the country.
At the time of Sejong the Great, there was status to divide the citizens in to different rank. The highest was the royal family: kings, queens. Then, it was nobles, commoners and slave or servants. Since Korea didn’t have its own language, so the country was borrowing the China’s language to communicate with others. Due to this, there were a lot of people who were illiterate just because of their status or gender.
Women and slaves were not considered as “human” so they were not educated at all. Some women and commoners were educated to certain level if they are fortunate enough but they couldn’t participate in any roles of the society in our case, “government”.(Some of fortunate cases were women in prostitution, child from decent family or commoners that had enough money to send them to school). Due to this, it was hard to communicate with citizens to clarify the laws or basic knowledge.
In 1428, there was incident which the son killed his own father. Chosun, considering the respect to the elders most significant attitude, believed this was just one outrageous, uneducated act done as the child. SeJong the Great was in despair of how people were illiterate about some of important aspects of country. So he decided to create our own language that was easy to read and learn.
From here, to conclude SeJong the Great invented Hangul so it was easy for commoners, slaves and women to learn and use it in real life so that they were aware of what’s happening in the country, cause no disrespectful act through education.
In our point of view, we could say the invention of Hangul was resulted from gender inequality, social justice so everyone has equal rights and do not cause any ignorant crimes to be caused.
Hope you enjoyed~
*Some of the diagram to show how Korea’s websites and Google is celebrating the Hangul Day*
What do you think of it?
Personally, I think this is just fabulous. It is first time that I am realizing that King actually cared about “status difference” and “gender inequality” happening in the country and trying to let EVERYONE have education given. Not mentioned above but when he proposed of inventing the language, all the governors disagreed of this. Mainly because THEY DON’T WANT TO LET LOWER ONES (women or slaves/commoners) TO EVEN HAVE A CHANCE TO OVERTHROW THEM. They just care about how citizens start to get education and realize A LOT of bribing or extortion done to them then they don’t stand a chance.
But, since SeJong the Great invented Hangul, currently we are able to have some freedom and difference from other Asian countries. To stay independent.
Giving a hint about future blog post topic – Independent activists actually used Hangul to communicate with each other secretly in order to gain independence from Japan in later century. This is when people realized the importance of having their own languages and used the most.
I really enjoyed reading your post on the history of Korean language. Although I hear Korean often in Vancouver, I have to admit I don’t know much about it at all. I also appreciate you bringing in the issue of gender and education into the discussion. It seems to be a common theme in history that women have been excluded from the public sphere, and confined to the private. And perhaps one of the most effective strategies to achieve that is to exclude women from being educated and preventing them from communicating in ways that have been decided to be more legitimate.
I totally agree with it. Women were treated very ironically depending on their status too~ Women who are married to noble or belong in families of noble. They were well trained and educated to do what women are “suppose” to do. This includes practising to become “the lady of house”. Since young, they were only educated enough to know how to read and write or write poems (it was something like “interaction between noble ladies” do) and housework. NO WOMEN WERE ALLOWED TO INTERFERE ANY MENLY CHORES. I find this quite hilarious since the book, “Things fall apart” that I am reading shows this so well.
Language, education and equality are interrelated. In your blog, it shows how Hangul as a language system serves to promote education to everyone. I can see it brings in many benefits such as widespread education to minorities such as women and people living in poverty. A improved literary rate not only means a more developed country but also makes people happier since they can communicate on an upper level and shift conversations from daily life to academic discussion. Indeed, Hangul has a significant meaning to the development of Korea.