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Hangeul s Mongolian predecessor
By Richard Pennington
Every Korean ― schoolboy or schoolgirl, taxi driver, computer programmer ― from the highest to the lowest levels of this society may know the glorious tale of how King Sejong took it upon himself in 1443 to construct an entirely new alphabet to fit the Korean language, freeing the people ― the literate ones, at least ― from their long dependence on classical Chinese. Hangeul is a fundamental part of Korean culture and a source of enduring pride. For good reason, we celebrate its creation and proclamation here every Oct. 9.
Linguistic specialists like Werner Sasse of Germany, Gari Ledyard of the United States, Hiroyuki Umeda of Japan and Geoffrey Sampson of the U.K. consider Hangeul as the world s best phonemic writing system. According to the latter, it s one of the great intellectual achievements of mankind.