Hunminjeongeum

The word Hunminjeongeum (訓民正音) means “the correct sounds for the instruction of the people”. It has two meanings. First, it is the original name of the Korean alphabet, whose creation by King Sejong of the Joseon dynasty is recorded in the Annals for the twelfth lunar month of 1443. Second, it is the title of the book, completed in 1446, that announced and explained the new letters.

The book exists in two main forms. The Haerye edition (“edition with explanations and examples”) of 1446 contains the king’s own short preface and rules, followed by a detailed commentary written by his scholars. A shorter Eonhae edition (“vernacular translation”) translated the king’s part into Korean using the new letters; its best-known copy was printed in 1459 at the front of the Buddhist book Worin seokbo.

The alphabet created in 1443 became the basis of Hangeul, the script that Koreans use today. That is why the story of Hunminjeongeum is both the story of a book and the story of one of the most carefully designed writing systems in the world.

Before 1443, Classical Chinese, the shared written language of East Asia, was the main language of government and scholarship in Korea. Korean words and grammar could also be written with methods that borrowed Chinese characters for their sound or meaning, such as idu and gugyeol. Writing habits differed by social position: yangban scholars commonly wrote Classical Chinese, while clerks used idu. These methods were clumsy and still required knowing many characters.

King Sejong explained his reason in a famous preface of only 54 Chinese characters. In our own translation, it says: “The sounds of our country’s speech differ from those of China and do not fit Chinese characters. So among the ignorant people there are many who have something to say but in the end cannot express their feelings. Pitying this, I have newly made twenty-eight letters, wishing only that everyone may learn them easily and use them conveniently every day.”

Historians also point to practical and political aims, and the sources themselves mention several. Jeong In-ji’s postface says that with the new letters one could understand texts and, in hearing lawsuits, “get at the true circumstances”. In the 1444 debate Sejong said that a translation of the Samgang haengsil (Illustrated Conduct of the Three Bonds) in the new script would help ordinary men and women grasp Confucian morality, and he asked his critics: “If I do not correct the rhyme books, who will?”, which points to the goal of fixing the Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters. These goals were not in conflict: a script everyone could read would serve both the people and the state.

The consonants start from five basic shapes that picture the speech organs. ㄱ (g/k) shows the back of the tongue blocking the throat; ㄴ (n) shows the tongue touching the upper palate; ㅁ (m) shows the mouth; ㅅ (s) shows a tooth; and ㅇ shows the round throat. Other consonants were made by adding strokes to show a stronger or breathier sound: from ㄱ comes ㅋ, from ㄴ come ㄷ and ㅌ, from ㅁ come ㅂ and ㅍ, and so on. A few letters, such as ㄹ, were formed differently.

The vowels start from three symbols with cosmic meaning: a round dot (ㆍ) for heaven, a flat line (ㅡ) for earth, and an upright line (ㅣ) for humankind. Combining the dot with the lines produces the other vowels, such as ㅗ, ㅏ, ㅜ and ㅓ.

Letters are not written in one long row as in English. They are grouped into syllable blocks: an initial consonant, a vowel and sometimes a final consonant, stacked into a square, like 한 (h + a + n). Final consonants do not need separate letters; the book says the initial consonants are reused as finals. This block shape lets Hangeul sit comfortably beside Chinese characters on the same page.

The original system also marked pitch with dots beside each syllable. Four of the original letters, ㆍ, ㅿ, ㆁ and ㆆ, are not part of the modern basic alphabet, and their histories differ: some sounds disappeared from the language, while the sound [ŋ] once written with ㆁ is now written with a final ㅇ.

The Haerye edition is a woodblock-printed book of 33 leaves: 4 for the king’s part and 29 for the commentary and postface. It opens with the king’s part, called Yeui (“examples and meanings”): the preface and short rules giving the sound of each letter, usually by comparing it with a Chinese character, and explaining how letters combine.

The larger second part, the Haerye (“explanations and examples”), was written at the king’s command by eight scholars: Jeong In-ji, then Minister of Rites, and Choe Hang, Bak Paeng-nyeon, Sin Suk-ju, Seong Sam-mun, Gang Hui-an, Yi Gae and Yi Seon-ro. Most were officials of the Hall of Worthies (Jiphyeonjeon); Gang Hui-an is listed in the postface with a post in the Office of Royal Kinsmen (Donnyeongbu). The Haerye has six sections: the principles of letter design (Jejahae), explanations of initial, medial and final sounds, the combining of letters (Hapjahae), and a list of example words (Yongjarye). It ends with a postface by Jeong In-ji.

In that postface Jeong In-ji wrote, in our own translation, that “a wise man can master them before the morning is over, and even a foolish one can learn them within ten days.” (The copy of the postface in the Veritable Records of King Sejong has a different word of the same meaning for “before the morning is over”: 崇朝 instead of the Haerye's 終朝.) The postface is dated to the first ten days (sanghan) of the ninth lunar month of 1446. Taking the last of those days, the 10th, and converting it to the Gregorian calendar gives 9 October, the date South Korea uses for Hangeul Day.

What makes the book remarkable is not only the alphabet itself but the fact that its creators explained, in writing, the theory behind each letter. Very few writing systems anywhere have a surviving document from the time of their creation that sets out their design principles; the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that other peoples created new scripts but did not publish a book like this one.

Sejong’s scholars were experts in Chinese phonology, the traditional science of classifying the sounds of Chinese characters. They classified consonants by where they are made in the mouth (molar, tongue, lip, tooth, throat) and by their manner (clear, aspirated, voiced, and so on). This framework allowed them to build a consonant system in which related sounds have related shapes.

The commentary also places the letters within Neo-Confucian cosmology. The five places of articulation correspond to the Five Phases (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), the seasons and directions; the three basic vowels represent heaven, earth and humankind, the three powers of the cosmos; and vowels are divided into “yang” and “yin” groups, with ㅣ treated as neutral, distinctions that relate to the vowel harmony of Middle Korean. For the scholars, a script that matched the patterns of nature was a correct script.

Modern linguists especially admire the fact that the shapes of the letters encode phonetic features, such as the added stroke for aspiration. The linguist Geoffrey Sampson (1985) classified Hangeul as a “featural” writing system for this reason.

The new letters were not welcomed by everyone. On the 20th day of the second lunar month of 1444, Choe Man-ri, deputy head (busejehak) of the Hall of Worthies, and six colleagues submitted a memorial against them. They argued that a kingdom serving China should follow Chinese ways of writing; that only peoples they regarded as barbarians, such as the Mongols, the Tanguts (Xi Xia), the Jurchens, the Japanese and the Tibetans, had scripts of their own; that an easy script would lead officials to neglect serious learning; and that the idu system was sufficient. Sejong argued back point by point, sent the memorialists to the State Tribunal (Uigeumbu) and released them the next day, but dismissed Jeong Chang-son from office and ordered Kim Mun questioned for changing his position.

Sejong then used the script in important projects. Yongbieocheonga (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven), a cycle of songs praising the founders of the dynasty, was compiled in 1445 and printed in 1447. Seokbo sangjeol, a biography of the Buddha, and Worin cheongang jigok, songs about the Buddha written by Sejong himself, appeared in the late 1440s. Dongguk jeong-un, completed in 1447 and distributed in 1448, used the letters to prescribe standard Korean readings of Chinese characters.

These first texts show that the script was used from the start for royal legitimacy, Buddhism and Confucian learning, not only for “the ignorant people” mentioned in the preface.

For most of the Joseon period, official documents and serious scholarship remained in Classical Chinese. The new script was commonly called eonmun, “writing for the vernacular”, a name Sejong himself used; specialists criticise the idea that the name was originally an insult, although the script long ranked below Classical Chinese among the educated elite, and some called it amkeul, “women’s writing”. It was used by women, Buddhist monks and people of various social ranks, though how widely it spread varied by period and region, and surviving examples do not by themselves show how many people could read. It was used for letters, poetry such as sijo and gasa, novels, translations of Confucian and Buddhist classics, and royal proclamations meant for the people.

Letters written in the Korean script offer a rare window onto the lives of people who otherwise left few records. Many surviving letters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries passed between husbands and wives or between mothers and children. Queens and royal women also used the script for political letters and memoirs, such as the Hanjungnok of Lady Hyegyeong, written around 1800.

There were setbacks. In the seventh lunar month of 1504 King Yeonsangun, angered by anonymous writings in the script that criticised him, ordered that eonmun should no longer be taught or learned, that those who knew it should not use it, and that people who knew it should be reported. The ban does not appear to have outlasted his overthrow in 1506. The script survived because it was simply useful.

In the late nineteenth century, reformers promoted it as a symbol of national modernisation. Article 14 of the Regulations on Official Documents, issued as Royal Decree No. 1 during the Gabo Reform in late 1894, stated that laws and decrees should take the national script (gungmun) as their basis, with a Chinese translation attached or with Korean and Chinese characters mixed. The name Hangeul is usually credited to the linguist Ju Si-gyeong and his circle; it appears in records from about 1912–1913, when Ju’s society renamed itself Hangeulmo, and spread widely after the journal Hangeul was launched in 1927, although some scholars have proposed other coiners.

Under Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), Korean language education was increasingly restricted and then phased out. The Korean Language Society issued the Unified Hangeul Orthography in 1933 and worked on a Korean dictionary; from October 1942 the colonial police arrested its members and others involved in the project, 33 people in all, in what is known as the Korean Language Society Incident. After liberation Hangeul became the main script of both Koreas; North Korea calls it Chosŏn’gŭl.

For centuries the Haerye edition was thought to be lost. Scholars knew only the king’s part and its vernacular translation, and so the design principles were a matter of guesswork; some even speculated that the letters imitated lattice windows. Then, around 1940, a copy surfaced in an old house in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province. The collector Jeon Hyeong-pil (known as Gansong) bought it, reportedly for a price often compared to that of ten tile-roofed houses, and it survived the colonial period and the Korean War in his collection.

The copy was missing its first two leaves, which were later filled in by brush; the restored text contains slips, for example ending the royal preface with 矣 instead of 耳. Its earlier ownership history in Andong is also disputed. The Kansong copy was designated a National Treasure on 20 December 1962 and inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 1997.

In 2008 a second, incomplete copy, the Sangju copy, was made public by Bae Ik-gi of Sangju. An antique-book dealer, Jo Yong-hun, said it had been stolen from his shop. In the civil case the Supreme Court recognised Jo’s ownership in 2011, and Jo donated the copy to the state before he died in 2012; Bae, however, was acquitted of theft, a verdict made final in 2014. Bae then sued the heritage authorities, but the courts, ending with the Supreme Court in 2019, confirmed the state’s ownership. Bae has not handed the book over; part of it was reportedly scorched in a fire at his house in 2015, and as of 2024 its whereabouts and condition were not publicly known.

Who created the letters? The Annals of King Sejong say that in the 12th month of 1443 “the king personally created” 28 letters (上親制諺文二十八字), and Jeong In-ji’s postface credits Sejong alone, adding that the making of the letters “followed no predecessor”. In the 1444 debate Sejong also defended the crown prince’s involvement in matters concerning the script. These statements should be distinguished from the documented work of the eight scholars who wrote the commentary between 1443 and 1446. Some scholars have argued that Hall of Worthies scholars must have helped with the design itself; others stress the royal sources and point out that Choe Man-ri, deputy head of that institution, opposed the project. The surviving records do not allow a full reconstruction of who did each part of the original design. Popular claims crediting a particular monk lack firm documentary support.

What models were used? The Annals, Choe Man-ri’s memorial and Jeong In-ji’s postface all say that the letters imitate the “ancient seal script” (字倣古篆). Scholars disagree about what this means: it may refer to the square, geometric style of the letters, to Chinese seal-script shapes, or, as Gari Ledyard argued, to the Mongol ’Phags-pa script. Ledyard proposed that a few consonant letters were adapted from ’Phags-pa, which Korean scholars knew from Yuan-era rhyme books, while the system as a whole was original. Other scholars reject any borrowing and emphasise the articulatory explanation in the Haerye. Theories deriving Hangeul from Indian scripts or from supposed ancient Korean scripts have little evidential basis.

What was the purpose? The royal preface stresses ease of everyday use for people who could not express themselves in writing, while other contemporary records mention moral instruction, understanding lawsuits and the correction of rhyme books, a goal also evident in Dongguk jeong-un. Historians weigh these differently, but the sources allow several purposes to be considered together rather than a single explanation.

The key documents are the Annals of King Sejong (Sejong sillok), which record the creation, Choe Man-ri’s memorial and the completion of the book; the Haerye edition itself; and the first books printed in the script. Because the Annals were compiled from court records after Sejong’s death (in 1452–1454), they present the official view and say little about the working process.

Linguists reconstruct fifteenth-century Korean by comparing the spellings in these early texts with later Korean and with Sino-Korean readings of Chinese characters. The pitch marks, obsolete letters and spelling conventions of the 1440s–60s are therefore a precious record of Middle Korean, the language of the time.

The Haerye edition raises its own textual problems. Its first two leaves are later restorations, so scholars must be careful when quoting the opening of the preface from the Kansong copy and compare it with the Annals and the Eonhae edition. Debates about the date behind Hangeul Day also depend on how one reads the Annals’ undated “this month” entries and converts lunar dates to the Western calendar; the holiday was earlier kept on 29 October, based on a misreading of the 1446 entry, and was moved to 9 October only after the Haerye edition, with its dated postface, was found.

Hangeul is used today in both Koreas and in Korean communities abroad. Learning the letters is only one part of literacy, which also involves understanding, interpreting and creating written texts.

Hunminjeongeum is also a symbol of Korean identity. Hangeul Day (9 October) is a public holiday in South Korea, and North Korea marks its own Chosŏn’gŭl Day on 15 January, based on the 1443/1444 creation date. UNESCO established the King Sejong Literacy Prize in 1989, with the support of the Republic of Korea, to reward work for literacy, with special attention to mother-language literacy. Linguists worldwide study the script as a rare example of a writing system consciously designed on phonetic principles.

The design of the script also maps neatly onto digital text. Unicode represents Hangeul both as individual letters (jamo) and as 11,172 precomposed modern syllables, and a modern syllable can also be written as a sequence of conjoining letters; this encoding mirrors the script’s division of each syllable into initial, medial and final parts.