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.
As I was reading your terrific post, I kept thinking back to the marvelous K-Drama series, The Tree with Deep Roots, about King Sejong's development of hangeul. As I remember, King Sejong was obsessed with accomplishing something great for his people. For someone like me, with only an aural familiarity with Korean, hangeul and how it functioned was clearly explained in the series.
As for Sejong's secrecy about it, didn't he also worry how the Ming dynasty might react to the replacement of Chinese writing with Hangeul?
Thank you, first of all, for your comments. Ah, yes, 뿌리깊은나무. I might be wrong, but I think that was the first drama that painted Sejong as the sole creator of Hangul--true to historical records, I would say.
And you bring up a very insightful question regarding the Chinese Ming Dynasty's reaction to it. Without getting too deep into the controversy surrounding the hangul creation, Ming never had any official reaction to it, quite surprisingly. There are mixed theories about that, but the way I read it, Sejong himself wasn't too worried about Ming but it was the top officials who were. In their opposition to hangul and Sejong, they kept bringing up Ming's potential wrath (which never happened), possibly to hide their fear of losing their "elite" status. When you get into the details of how Sejong planned to win over those officials, you're left shaking your head because it looks apparent that Sejong's been planning the whole thing for about 20 years!!
Thanks for clearing that up about the Ming dynasty. Now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense that Sejong's top officials would have been worried about 'losing their elite status'. Hangeul was not only one of the greatest intellectual achievements, it also represented the democratization of writing, putting a pen in everyone's hand for the first time in history. Sejong gave power of the written word to the people.
As I was reading your terrific post, I kept thinking back to the marvelous K-Drama series, The Tree with Deep Roots, about King Sejong's development of hangeul. As I remember, King Sejong was obsessed with accomplishing something great for his people. For someone like me, with only an aural familiarity with Korean, hangeul and how it functioned was clearly explained in the series.
As for Sejong's secrecy about it, didn't he also worry how the Ming dynasty might react to the replacement of Chinese writing with Hangeul?
Thank you, first of all, for your comments. Ah, yes, 뿌리깊은나무. I might be wrong, but I think that was the first drama that painted Sejong as the sole creator of Hangul--true to historical records, I would say.
And you bring up a very insightful question regarding the Chinese Ming Dynasty's reaction to it. Without getting too deep into the controversy surrounding the hangul creation, Ming never had any official reaction to it, quite surprisingly. There are mixed theories about that, but the way I read it, Sejong himself wasn't too worried about Ming but it was the top officials who were. In their opposition to hangul and Sejong, they kept bringing up Ming's potential wrath (which never happened), possibly to hide their fear of losing their "elite" status. When you get into the details of how Sejong planned to win over those officials, you're left shaking your head because it looks apparent that Sejong's been planning the whole thing for about 20 years!!
Thanks for clearing that up about the Ming dynasty. Now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense that Sejong's top officials would have been worried about 'losing their elite status'. Hangeul was not only one of the greatest intellectual achievements, it also represented the democratization of writing, putting a pen in everyone's hand for the first time in history. Sejong gave power of the written word to the people.
Could NOT have said it better myself.
HAPPY HANGEUL DAY tomorrow! I'm glad I discovered the https://asiasociety.org web site. I found Chris Livaccari's article there, and I was researching another good article on that site, "Women's Role in Contemporary Korea". [https://asiasociety.org/education/worlds-most-incredible-alphabet] and [https://asiasociety.org/education/womens-role-contemporary-korea}. There is so much to learn.
Thanks for noticing the Hangeul Day -- October 9. 한글날.