Hooray for Hangeul Day (“Korean Alphabet Day”)!

You may wonder why there is a national holiday to commemorate a language. But it’s really so much more than just looking at letters. Hangeul, as it’s known today, has a checkered and tenuous history. It is a reflection of what the Korean people have endured. So the celebration isn’t so much about a language, but the cultural identity and lasting fortitude of the people. (Do you have South Korea’s anthem playing in your head now? Yeah, me neither. But if I knew it, I would! I did when I was little.)

So let’s learn about this “reflection” and what it means….

Are You Speakin’ My Language? – The Creation of Hangeul

Before Hangul was created, the people of Korea (then the kingdom of Joseon) were using a combination of Classical Chinese and local native dialects for written and spoken word.

Since Classical Chinese and the local native dialects were distinctively different, people had to learn them both (or all). Well, Classical Chinese has a ton of characters! This excluded the underprivileged class because there was no formal education for them to learn said characters.

Well, King Sejong the Great didn’t like this. Other monarchs may not have had an issue with having illiterate subjects but not King Sejong.

He saw this as a problem not only because of the lack of literacy but, probably more importantly, due to the lack of a common identity of people who spoke a common language.

So in order to unify the people of Korea, he created the Korean alphabet in 1443. And he published it in 1446 along with a full explanation of what everything meant and why.

Even though King Sejong tried to keep it simple and easy to learn, there was a lot of push back as there often is with change. However, and obviously, it caught on and a unified Korean identity began to form.

But people thought it was at risk of dying out at one point….

A Little Bit of History

In the early 1900’s, the Korean Language Society was formed to preserve the language and in 1912 it had finally become referred to as “Hangul” – “han” meaning great and “gul” meaning script. But there was concern that Hangeul could be phased out of existence during Korea’s colonization by Japanese, which had started in 1910. During this time, written Hangeul and teaching Hangeul were banned!

Japanese colonization didn’t end until 1945, with the end of World War II, when U.S. and Soviet and other allied forces put an end to Japan’s attempted domination of Asia. (There’s soooo much more history and detail to get into here but I’ll save it for another day (duh, North and South Korea split). Not to mention the Japanese colonization of Korea is a sticky subject. But today is solely about celebrating Hangeul!)

Surprisingly, Hangeul stayed strong and survived even after a 35 year ban! And so Hangeul Proclamation Day became a national holiday.

But then between 1991-2013, it lost its status as a national holiday because corporations thought there weren’t enough work days in the year. What, really?! Yeah corporate lobbyists got their way.

However, it was brought back as a national holiday on October 8th, 2013. Yay!

Structure of Hangeul

I’m not a linguist by any means so I’ll just say that there’s 14 consonants and 10 vowels. (But really there are more consonants than that because of double consonants but for some reason they aren’t included in the count.) And these letters combine to form a word or part of a word, just like in English. But the word looks like a “character” (i.e. a Chinese character but not Chinese. Make sense?) that are syllable blocks.

Honestly, I think it’s the easiest Asian language to learn. It’s been lauded for it’s beautiful simplicity in making the shapes of the consonants based on the shape of the mouth when making the sound.

I love the simplicity of the block lettering and the sounds are pretty straight forward. There’s really no fancy intonations to be made. If there is, I’ve completely missed it!

Celebration of Hangeul Day

Hangeul day isn’t celebrated per se. I certainly don’t celebrate here in the U.S. of A. Nearly everyone in South Korea gets the day off since it’s a national holiday, but no one is at home practicing writing. Just like most holidays, people just enjoy the day off. That’s why I like taking this moment to recognize Hangeul. It has proven itself to be a resilient language with lots of character (no pun intended), just like the people who speak it. (…”Three thousand Li of splendid rivers and mountains, filled with Roses of Sharon; Great Korean people, stay true to the Great Korean way…”) 😉