The hottest TV show this season in Korea is a historical drama called Tree with Deep Roots. The drama is about King Saejong, one of the most respected kings from Chosun dynasty in Korea, and his journey of invention and spreading of Hangul, the Korean alphabet.
Before King Saejong invented Hangul, Koreans used Chinese characters to read and write. However, Chinese writing system was not adequate in expressing all Korean sounds and it was incredibly complicated for general people to learn because chinese characters were ideograms consisted of thousands of characters. Therefore only people in high social positions, who actually had enough time and resources to study the letters, were able to learn and most of the peasants were left illiterate. King Saejong, caring deeply about his people, felt sorry and decided to invent the Korean alphabet that is easy for all people to learn.
Hangul was invented by King Saejong and possibly the scholars in Jip-Hyun-jun in 1443 and it was proclaimed in 1446. The foundation of Hangul is in universal principle. The consonants are consisted of three groups that resemble the figure of throat, mouth, and teeth (ㅇ,ㅁ,Δ)and the vowels are consisted of three groups that resemble the heaven, the earth, and a man(∙, ㅡ ,ㅣ). Hangul was originally proclaimed as Hoon Min Jung Um which means the right sounds that meant to teach people. In contrasts to Chinese writing system that consists of thousands of complicated ideograms, Hangul was made as phonogram that is consisted of only 28 alphabets which allowed even the peasants to easily learn how to read and write.
Although the proclamation of Hangul ran into some strong opposition among vassals who feared the abandonment of Chinese writing system, Hangul became incredibly popular among women and children and it spread rather quickly throughout the nation.
Hangul made possible to hold all the unique Korean sounds that were impossible to express by Chinese characters before and helped to significantly lower the illiterate rate in Korea.
In celebration of King Saejong and his great achievement in invention of Hangul, Koreans celebrate Oct. 9 as Hangul day.
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