Origin of Hangul
The native Korean alphabet, called in South Korea and in North Korea, is a writing system for the Korean language. It was mostly completed around late 1443 to early 1444 and officially published in 1446. It was invented to serve a number of purposes, especially to aid general literacy in Korea.
Before Hangul's invention, Korea had been using Hanja and variants of it to write Korean. However, the script was poorly suited for transcribing Korean, and its difficulty contributed to high illiteracy amongst commoners.
King Sejong the Great was responsible for Hangul's creation. Most scholars believe Sejong was significantly personally involved in creating the script and worked on the script alongside one or more others. A minority of scholars believe that he was the sole creator of it. The script was possibly largely designed in secret, possibly in anticipation of the backlash that the script eventually received, although this is debated.
According to the Hunminjeongeum Haerye, one of the two texts written to introduce Hangul, the shapes of Hangul letters are designed to reflect the shapes of speech organs and concepts in Chinese philosophy. Hangul also received inspiration from Chinese linguistic theory of the time, although these theories were innovated upon and adapted to suit Korean phonology. Some scholars believe that Hangul received minor inspiration from the Tibetan-Mongolian script ʼPhags-pa, although that hypothesis still argues that Hangul was largely original.
Historiography
There are extremely few known pieces of contemporary evidence on when and how Hangul was created. The main sources of information are the announcement of Hangul around 1443 or 1444 CE and the rebuke of Hangul in 1444 CE, which are both part of the Veritable Records of Sejong, as well as the treatises of 1446 used to promulgate Hangul: the Hunminjeongeum and the Hunminjeongeum Haerye. Scholars have also attempted to make inferences based on other less direct pieces of evidence as well.The Veritable Records of Sejong, part of the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty, were produced by government historians after the death of Sejong based on primary sources. Historians had editorial jurisdiction, independent from the king, on what to include in the Records. Several historians have argued that the personal opinions of the historians have impacted the Records coverage of Hangul.
The treatises of 1446 were originally published as a single book, with the Haerye being a commentary book for the Hunminjeongeum. They are of separate authorship; the Hunminjeongeum was authored by Sejong himself, while the Haerye was written by a group of scholars led by Chŏng Inji. While the Hunminjeongeum remained in the historical record, the Haerye was eventually lost and forgotten, possibly by the early 16th century. In 1940, a copy of it was rediscovered. Its discovery dramatically altered scholarship on Hangul.
Gari Ledyard, a significant Western authority on the history of Hangul, was critical of early Western scholarship on Hangul and Korea in general. He argues that "few today would accept either their methodology or most of their conclusions" and that Western scholars often insufficiently accounted for Korean history and documentary evidence on the script's creation, and instead relied mostly on comparing the shapes and sounds of letters. According to Ledyard, Western scholarship on Hangul slowly evolved and improved over time.
Background
Before the invention of Hangul, Korea had been using Hanja since antiquity. The difficulty of the script limited its use to mostly upper-class people; commoners were largely illiterate. The script is not well suited for representing the Korean language; the Chinese and Korean languages are not closely related and differ in significant ways. For example, Classical Chinese uses subject–verb–object word order while Middle Korean uses subject–object–verb word order. Korean pronunciation and ideas could only be indirectly represented. Some efforts were made to adapt the script to suit Korean, which resulted in the Idu script and its varieties, including Hyangch'al. Scholars have evaluated these scripts as complicated and difficult to decipher, and thus not useful for promoting widespread literacy.Beginning of work on Hangul
It is not known when work began on developing Hangul, nor what the process looked like. Scholars have attempted to approximate when Hangul began to be developed by examining previous events in Sejong's reign. Ledyard argues that one possible motivator for Hangul's creation was the 1431 pharmacological survey of Korea. Numerous Korean plants only had Korean-language names for them and their names had to be recorded in the book; in the end their names were recorded in an approximate phonetic fashion. Ledyard argues that a 1433 survey of native Korean music likely faced similar issues, although the results of said survey are not known. Several historians have argued that, in 1434, Sejong indirectly vocalized interest in universal literacy when he expressed frustration that commoners would not be able to read the didactic book on Confucian morals . A decade later, after Hangul was announced, Sejong reiterated this frustration with regards to that text. Despite this, a Hangul version of that text would only be produced by the reign of King Seongjong.Sejong had long studied the Chinese script and language and their relationship with the Korean language. On several occasions he bemoaned the impacts that the lack of proficiency in Chinese and Chinese characters had on the administration of the state. Some scholars have thus argued that Sejong may have been instead or partially motivated to create Hangul as a tool for aiding Koreans with the Chinese language and script. Ledyard argues that Chinese phonological theory at the time was insufficient for grasping the historical linguistics of Chinese, and that Hangul may have been developed to help address this concern.
Potential secrecy in Hangul's development
Scholars have debated on if Hangul was possibly developed in secret, especially from Sejong's court. The paucity of records has, in part, motivated such hypotheses. To Ledyard's interpretation, Hangul's announcement apparently came as a surprise to the mainline Hall of Worthies. Historian Sixiang Wang argued that the script was likely kept a secret from Ming China, as Ming would have preferred that its tributary state, Joseon, use the Chinese script.Linguist Ahn Pyong-hi argues against the secrecy hypothesis. He argues that the hypothesis relies on inferences and not direct evidence. To his view, Sejong did not need to fear opposition, as he was sufficiently capable of handling it. Ahn also argues that Hangul's lack of coverage in the Veritable Records could potentially be explained by the court historians determining that the records they included were sufficient for covering the topic. Ahn also interprets several sentences in the rebuke of Hangul and in other texts as suggesting that others could have been aware of Hangul before its 1443 announcement.
Early history of Hangul
Announcement and backlash
The following is the first mention of Hangul in the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty:The above record documents an informal internal announcement of Hangul, and not its official promulgation. While the design of the script was probably mostly complete by this announcement, the script would not be officially published until 1446, after documentation for it was completed. A demonstration of the script was held, wherein clerks were assembled to learn how the script worked.
A major faction in the Hall began moving to condemn the script. That faction, centered around one of the Hall's highest-ranking members Ch'oe Malli, had been growing increasingly critical of Sejong. This was due to a number of reasons, with one major reason being Sejong's affinity for Buddhism, which was viewed with hostility by Confucianists of the time. Around two months after the announcement of Hangul, Ch'oe submitted a now famous rebuke of Hangul to Sejong, abridged below:
Sejong and the anti-Hangul faction then engaged in a fierce debate, with scribes apparently struggling to document the technical arguments made. The anti-Hangul faction expressed concern about a native Korean script being too far a departure from Chinese civilization, which they insisted Korea should be deferent to in a Confucian manner. Sejong rebutted that he felt the script was Confucian, as it was created out of a desire to benefit his subjects. Anti-Hangul sentiment was also partially motivated by elitism; literacy in Hanja was then seen as a status symbol, and promoting general literacy could be seen as harming the social positions of the elite. The script was commonly called ŏnmun, which developed an elitist connotation of "vulgar writing".
Ch'oe and several of the scholars that rebuked Sejong were imprisoned for a single day. To Ledyard's knowledge, the rebuke and debate are the only surviving official records of complaints about Hangul from Sejong's time. According to historian Sixiang Wang, modern sentiment has lionized Sejong and vilified Ch'oe in this debate.
Work on documentation and rhyme dictionaries
Due to the anti-Hangul faction's opposition, Sejong relied on younger men of the Hall of Worthies for help in applying and developing the official documentation for the script. By Ledyard's analysis, these men had an average age of around 28. Significant among them was Sin Sukchu, who was known to have a talent for languages. At some point, possibly soon after the announcement of the script, Sejong ordered the establishment of the office . This office went on to complete a number of seminal Hangul texts.Rhyme dictionaries were influential on the development of Hangul and its documentation. Sejong and Sin Sukchu had been deeply interested in such dictionaries even before Hangul's announcement, and Hangul's design and documentation reflect sound classification principles of several rhyme dictionaries. The first major Hangul-related project undertaken by the Ŏnmunch'ŏng was the translation of a rhyme dictionary: '. Sejong ordered its compilation days before Ch'oe's rebuke of Hangul. The project was possibly never completed. The Ŏnmunch'ŏng possibly switched to focusing on compiling another rhyme dictionary Tongguk chŏngun, which was published in 1447. The work served as a major standard for Sino-Korean pronunciation for the next several decades, although modern scholars have described it as overly prescriptive and artificial. Work continued on rhyme dictionaries even after the Tongguk chŏngun; the Sasŏng t'onggo was published some time before 1455, and the ' was published in 1455.