King Sejong and the Korean Alphabets

The first part of today’s post was Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V’d from my earlier post put up a little more than 2 years ago in order to start talking about the greatness of King Sejong and as a continuation of my last post about Sejong’s ruthless father.

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It is said that approximately 10,000 languages have existed throughout the human history. About 4,000 of them have been forever lost and 2,000 may not qualify as a stand-alone language; that they are various dialects among small tribes in undeveloped regions of the world.

But for the sake of this particular discussion, we’ll count those too as languages, which leaves us with 6,000 languages that are spoken today, with “spoken” being the keyword here. How many of those do you think have some sort of a writing system, regardless of how rudimentary they are, like the simple notches engraved on dried wood planks? Linguists believe it’s about 3,000, with less than 10% of them being used in any systematic way in the world today.

Of those written languages that have ever existed, how many do you think has a known creator, creation history, date, and purpose?

ONE.

In. The. Entire. Human. History.

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the image is from an external article written by Chris Livaccari, for the Asia Society.

Instead of me, who’s so clearly biased, yapping about it, let’s hear what the leading scholars around the world are saying about the Korean writing system.

Jared Diamond, UCLA Professor and the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the popular Guns, Germs, and Steel:

The King’s 28 letters (24 in use today) have been described by scholars as the world’s best alphabet and the most scientific system of writing.

Harvard Professor Edwin Reischauer:

Hangeul is perhaps the most scientific system of writing in general use in any country.

Geoffrey Sampson, Professor of Language, Computing, and Linguistics at University of Sussex:

Whether or not it is ultimately the best of all conceivable scripts for Korean, Hangeul must be unquestionably ranked as one of the greatest intellectual achievements of humankind.

JD McCawley, Linguistics Professor at University of Chicago used to celebrate the Han-geul Day (October 9, a national holiday in Korea) before he passed away:

I take it for granted that the academic world of linguistics praise and celebrate Hangeul Day as a holiday. So I’ve been celebrating Hangeul Day every year for more than 20 years.

Professor Hiroyuki Umeda of University of Tokyo:

Hangeul is the most developed phonemic alphabet and also feature characters that are much better than Roman characters.

Professor Werner Sasse of University of Hamburg:

King Sejong systematized the phonological theory five centuries earlier than the West which completed its phonological theory in the twentieth century. Hangeul is the best alphabet in the world which combines the traditional philosophy and the science theory.

Okay, I think we’ve established the fact that the Korean alphabets and writing system are pretty awesome.

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Let’s get to the story of the creation of hangeul itself. Before 한글 (it’s pronounced like “hahn-gle”), the Korean writing system has relied on the Chinese letters exclusively. What you must understand, however, is the fact that the native languages between the two ancient countries are vastly different. Chinese is logographic while Korean is syllabic; that is to say, Chinese letters are representations of meanings themselves, like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, whereas Korean letters are representations of sounds, like English, Spanish, French, German... The distinction isn’t all that intuitive, but the point here is that the languages are very different.

So, what the ancient Korean scribes and record-keepers, a very small number of them, did was they came up with a system of writing things down with Chinese letters and notations derived from them that were sound-based only, sometimes with the meaning attached and sometimes not (it’s confusing, I know). It’s an odd system to untrained eyes (it’s very difficult for me to decipher old texts written this way—I assume that only trained college professors/graduate school level students can read those texts).

these short form markings that look like Chinese letters are what the ancient Korean scribes came up with.

But the court officials, throughout various dynasties for centuries, wrote everything in formal Chinese while they spoke in Korean. It’s kind of like Isaac Newton speaking in English but writing his monumental Principia Mathematica all in Latin, although he chose to write in Latin.

I hope I described, at least a little bit, the backdrop for how things were written in Korea prior to the 15th century. Remember, only a tiny fraction of people could read or write.

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With that, let me show you the first few sentences that King Sejong wrote in his publication of 훈민정음 (Hoon-Min-Jeong-Eum, 訓民正音, “Proper Sounds for Educating the Common People”), the official and the original name for what we now call the Korean alphabets, or 한글. Consider these few sentences as the Preamble.

in this original publication, there are alphabets that Sejong himself created but no longer in use. it looks different from what you may be used to.

This old Korean is probably a lot more difficult for Korean learners than Shakespearean dialogues for English learners. I’d understand maybe 1/4 of it if I didn’t know what this document was. So, in modern Korean, this Preamble would read…

Surprisingly, I couldn’t find a good English translation of this stupendous statement anywhere. One of those what the hell? moments. This is NOT something I want to butcher in translation, so I’m taking the coward’s route. Here’s a summary, not a full translation.

Our language is different from the Chinese and because of it, I know there are a lot of common folks that cannot pursue what they want to. For them, I’ve created these new 28 letters, so everyone should learn them, and use them for their own good and comfort.

Here, King Sejong is essentially saying that he’s created this easy-to-learn set of letters for the lower-class people who are frequently taken advantage of by abusive local officials and/or landowners because of illiteracy.

Brilliant, benevolent, studious, extremely hard-working. Anyone know a country or two that need(s) a leader like him?

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At this point, you might be asking, did Sejong really create these letters all by himself? It’s more than a fair question. I mean, it is only natural to have doubts about one man inventing such scientific and well-organized system of writing all by himself, especially given that there were no known instances of that happening anywhere in the world. (Now I think about it, maybe that was the key—that Sejong didn’t know that it was an insurmountable task for any one man.)

To give you the answer first, no one knows for sure, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that yes, he was the sole creator of the new Korean alphabets. I’ll explain why shortly.

this is the most popular image of King Sejong, but it isn’t real. no one knows what he looked like because his real portrait was lost during the Japanese invasion of 1592. this imagined painting is the work of artist Kim Ki-chang, 1970.

All Korean kids in elementary school are taught, as I was, that hangeul was created by King Sejong and the Jip-Hyeon-Jeon (집현전) scholars. Wikipedia says…

The Hall of Worthies, or Jiphyeonjeon, was a Korean royal research institute during the Joseon period. It was founded by King Sejong the Great in March 1420, and disbanded in June 1456. The Hall of Worthies is known for its role in compiling the Hunminjeongeum, the original treatise on Hangul.

I have no clue why this institution is called The Hall of Worthies, and it wasn’t created by King Sejong. It’s been in existence since late Goryeo period although this “Royal Research Institute” at times existed in name only with no definite function.

So says Wikipedia and the Korean textbooks on how hangeul (or, sometimes you will see “hangul”) was created—a joint effort between the King and the research scholars.

But!!! This is a huge BUT. The truth of the matter is that there is absolutely NO record whatsoever of King Sejong discussing anything about the new letters with anyone, period. Until he announces the creation of the new letters out of nowhere in December of 1443, with no prior mention of it in any written documents, stories, or any other form of records, spoken, whispered, or rumored.

In my past Joseon dynasty related posts, I’ve alluded to how the Joseon court kept written records of everything—The Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty. As a point of reference, there is this entry in Book 7 of Tae-jong’s reign. My translations.

In the 4th year of Tae-jong (Yi Bang-won, Sejong’s father), February 8th, 4th item.

… during hunting expedition, the King fell off the horse but wasn’t hurt. (Embarrassed) The King said, “do not let the historian(s) know about this.”

True to their duty, historians left records of the King telling them not to put the accident in the records. Doing their job to a tee, and kudos to them.

My point being, the Veritable Records and the historians of Joseon court left records of everything that King had ever done when he was in a meeting with officials (there are stories of them acting like James Bond in trying to catch every single move made by Kings). And there is no mention at all of Sejong working to create new letters for the Korean people until it is finished and ready to be published? There is no greater circumstantial evidence than this—Sejong worked alone and in complete secrecy.

the actual Veritable Records page where the creation of the new letters appears for the first time. dark grey shaded area.

Book 102 of Sejong’s Reign:

In the 25th year of Sejong, December 30, 2nd item.

… the King created 28 new letters, comprising of initial, middle, and final sound (초, 初 ·중, 中 · 종성(終聲)) that combine to form complete syllables (characters). They’re simple but there are infinite number of ways they can be constructed, and these are called hoon-min-jeong-eum.

Then, you might ask, why all the secrecy? Because Sejong knew there would be a firestorm of opposition from top officials—which became reality later—who didn’t want their apple carts upset, so to speak. Being able to read and write was the privilege of the chosen few.

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Go back to what the leading linguistics scholars have said about the Korean letters and the writing system. “One of the greatest intellectual achievements of the humankind,” one said.

(most likely) Conceived and invented by one man. 600 years ago. By a King who valued the good of the common people over preserving the status quo for the few. By a man who became King only after a series of incredible and bloody turn of events.

Lucky for all of us.