Origin of Hangul - Historical Record

Historical Record

Hangul was promulgated by the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty, Sejong the Great. Sejong's scholarly institute, the Hall of Worthies, is often credited with the work, and at least one of its scholars was heavily involved in its creation, but it appears to have also been a personal project of Sejong.

The project was completed in late 1443 or early 1444 and published in 1446 in a document titled Hunmin jeong-eum "The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People", after which the alphabet itself was named. Sejong explained that he created the new script because the existing idu system, based on Chinese characters, was not a good fit for the Korean language and were so difficult that only privileged male aristocrats (yangban) could afford the time and education to learn to read and write fluently. The vast majority of Koreans were left effectively illiterate. Hangul, on the other hand, was designed so that even a commoner with little education could learn to read and write: "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."

Except for the obsolete palatal stops, all 36 initials in the Chinese inventory had hangul equivalents:

During the second half of the fifteenth century, hangul was used primarily by women and the undereducated. It faced heavy opposition from Confucian scholars educated in Chinese, notably Choe Manri, who believed hanja to be the only legitimate writing system. Later kings too were hostile. King Yeonsangun forbade use of hangul in 1504, during a series of palace purges, after commoners made hangul posters mocking him, and King Jungjong abolished the Hangul Ministry in 1506. The account of the design of hangul was lost, and hangul would not return to common use until the independence of Korea after World War II.