Korean is the native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the national language of both North Korea and South Korea.
Hanja, alternatively known as Hancha, are Chinese characters used to write the Korean language. After characters were introduced to Korea to write Literary Chinese, they were adapted to write Korean as early as the Gojoseon period.
The Korean Alphabet Day, known as Hangeul Day (Korean: 한글날) in South Korea, and Chosŏn'gŭl Day (Korean: 조선글날) in North Korea, is a national Korean commemorative day marking the invention and proclamation of Hangul (한글), the Korean alphabet, by the 15th-century Korean king Sejong the Great. It is observed on October 9 in South Korea and January 15th in North Korea. Excluding the years 1990 to 2012, when the government maximized business days to expedite industrial growth, Hangul Day has been a national holiday in South Korea since 1970.
Joseon, officially Great Joseon State, was a dynastic kingdom of Korea that existed for 505 years. It was founded by Taejo of Joseon in July 1392 and replaced by the Korean Empire in October 1897. The kingdom was founded following the aftermath of the overthrow of Goryeo in what is today the city of Kaesong. Early on, Korea was retitled and the capital was relocated to modern-day Seoul. The kingdom's northernmost borders were expanded to the natural boundaries at the rivers of Amnok and Tuman through the subjugation of the Jurchens.
Sungkyunkwan University is a private research university with campuses in Seoul and Suwon, South Korea.
Idu is an archaic writing system that represents the Korean language using Chinese characters ("hanja"). The script, which was developed by Buddhist monks, made it possible to record Korean words through their equivalent meaning or sound in Chinese.
Korean poetry is poetry performed or written in the Korean language or by Korean people. Traditional Korean poetry is often sung in performance. Until the 20th century, much of Korean poetry was written in Hanja.
Korean literature is the body of literature produced by Koreans, mostly in the Korean language and sometimes in Classical Chinese. For much of Korea's 1,500 years of literary history, it was written in Hanja. It is commonly divided into classical and modern periods, although this distinction is sometimes unclear. Korea is home to the world's first metal and copper type, the world's earliest known printed document and the world's first featural script.
Hyangchal is an archaic writing system of Korea and was used to transcribe the Korean language in Chinese characters. Using the hyangchal system, Chinese characters were given a Korean reading based on the syllable associated with the character. The hyangchal writing system is often classified as a subgroup of the Idu script.
Goryeosa, or History of Goryeo, is an extensive historical record of the Goryeo dynasty, compiled by the officials of Goryeo's successor state, Joseon. Its compilation started during the reign of Taejo, was completed under Munjong, and was first printed under Danjong. Goryeosa consists of 139 volumes and stylistically follows Chinese historiography where sections are organized by their purpose. The section compiling the annals of the kings, sega narrates the history of Goryeo kings. The monograph section, ji, contains "accounts of the politics, economics, personnel, geography, astronomy, and other topics related to Goryeo society." The biographies section, yeoljeon, describes notable officials. The chronology section, yeonpyo lists the names of kings and their reigns. The listing section, mongnok, is the table of contents of the entire compilation.
Korean mixed script is a form of writing the Korean language that uses a mixture of the Korean alphabet or hangul and hanja, the Korean name for Chinese characters. The distribution on how to write words usually follows that all native Korean words, including suffixes, particles, and honorific markers are generally written in hangul and never in hanja. Sino-Korean vocabulary or hanja-eo, either words borrowed from Chinese or created from Sino-Korean roots, were generally always written in hanja, although very rare or complex characters were often substituted with hangul. Although the Korean alphabet was introduced and taught to people beginning in 1446, most literature until the early twentieth century was written in literary Chinese known as hanmun.
Yongbieocheonga, literally Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, was the first work written in Hangul. The book was published in 1447 and written by Jeong Inji, An Ji and Kwon Jae. The preface was written by Seong Sam-mun and Pak Paengnyeon.
The Chinese family of scripts includes writing systems used to write various East Asian languages, that ultimately descend from the oracle bone script invented in the Yellow River valley during the Shang dynasty. These include written Chinese itself, as well as adaptations of it for other languages, such as Japanese kanji, Korean hanja, Vietnamese chữ Hán and chữ Nôm, Zhuang sawndip, and Bai bowen. More divergent are the Tangut script, Khitan large script, Khitan small script and its offspring, the Jurchen script, as well as the Yi script, Sui script, and Geba syllabary, which were inspired by written Chinese but not descended directly from it. While written Chinese and many of its descendant scripts are logographic, others are phonetic, including the kana, Nüshu, and Lisu syllabaries, as well as the bopomofo semi-syllabary.
The traditional periodization of Korean distinguishes:
Middle Korean is the period in the history of the Korean language succeeding Old Korean and yielding in 1600 to the Modern period. The boundary between the Old and Middle periods is traditionally identified with the establishment of Goryeo in 918, but some scholars have argued for the time of the Mongol invasions of Korea. Middle Korean is often divided into Early and Late periods corresponding to Goryeo and Joseon respectively. It is difficult to extract linguistic information from texts of the Early period, which are written using adaptations of Chinese characters. The situation was transformed in 1446 by the introduction of the Hangul alphabet, so that Late Middle Korean provides the pivotal data for the history of Korean.
Uigeumbu, also known as Geum-o or Wangbu in the Joseon dynasty of Korea, was the royal law enforcement body responsible for prosecuting treason and moral crimes based on Confucian principles. Ordinary crimes were investigated and prosecuted by Hyeongjo. It played a crucial role in strengthening the authority of the monarchy.
Hanmunhak or Literary Chinese literature in Korea is Korean literature written in Literary Chinese, which represents an early phase of Korean literature and influenced the literature written in the Korean language.
Chinese writing, culture and institutions were imported as a whole by Vietnam, Korea, Japan and other neighbouring states over an extended period. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries AD, followed by Confucianism as these countries developed strong central governments modelled on Chinese institutions. In Vietnam and Korea, and for a shorter time in Japan and the Ryukyus, scholar-officials were selected using examinations on the Confucian classics modelled on the Chinese civil service examinations. Shared familiarity with the Chinese classics and Confucian values provided a common framework for intellectuals and ruling elites across the region. All of this was based on the use of Literary Chinese, which became the medium of scholarship and government across the region. Although each of these countries developed vernacular writing systems and used them for popular literature, they continued to use Chinese for all formal writing until it was swept away by rising nationalism around the end of the 19th century.
The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern writing system for the Korean language. The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs used to pronounce them. They are systematically modified to indicate phonetic features. The vowel letters are systematically modified for related sounds, making Hangul a featural writing system. It has been described as a syllabic alphabet as it combines the features of alphabetic and syllabic writing systems.
There has been much debate over the use of Chinese characters, in Korean orthography, otherwise known as Korean mixed script. The questions surrounding the use and relevance of the format over Hangŭl exclusivity are still hotly contested topics to this day in Korea and garners the attention of many, as it is an issue which concerns education from its earliest years to university.
