Hangul

In the 15th century, King Sejong of the Joseon dynasty sponsored the development of a writing system suited to the sounds of Korean. The new alphabet was completed in 1443 and publicly promulgated in 1446 in a work titled Hunminjeongeum, commonly translated as “Proper Sounds to Instruct the People.” The project was intended to make reading and writing more accessible to people who had difficulty using the Chinese characters then prominent in formal learning. Scholars at the royal Hall of Worthies contributed explanatory material to the promulgation text.

Hangul is an alphabet: its letters represent sounds, rather than each character standing for a whole word. The modern basic inventory is commonly described as 24 letters—14 consonants and 10 vowels—while the original system contained 28. In ordinary writing, letters are arranged into visual blocks corresponding to Korean syllables, with consonant and vowel positions combined within each block. The layout makes syllables easy to distinguish on the page without changing the alphabetic nature of the writing system.

Hangul's letter shapes were designed with sound production in mind. In descriptions of the system, basic consonant shapes relate to the position of the tongue, lips or other speech organs used to produce their sounds. The vowel letters use lines and marks associated in the traditional account with ideas of the human, the earth and the sun. Additional letters and sound distinctions are formed through systematic modifications and combinations. This gives the script a visible relationship between some letter forms and their phonetic roles, although the alphabet still requires knowledge of Korean pronunciation and spelling conventions to read fluently.

The introduction of Hangul did not immediately displace Chinese-character-based writing in every formal setting. Its use and social status developed over time; today it is the principal script for Korean in both South Korea and North Korea, and it is used by Korean communities around the world. South Korea marks Hangeul Day on 9 October, recalling the 1446 promulgation. The script is both a practical writing system and a prominent symbol of Korean linguistic and cultural history.

The surviving Hunminjeongeum manuscript explains the alphabet's purpose and records the system's promulgation, with commentaries and examples prepared by scholars. UNESCO added the manuscript to its Memory of the World Register in 1997. It is held by the Kansong Art Museum. The manuscript is valuable not only as an early document about Hangul, but also as evidence of a deliberate effort to explain how a writing system could represent the Korean language.