This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Asia from the KU Center for East Asian Studies.

Once upon a time, the Koreans wrote using Classical Chinese characters that they called hanja. Then, in 1443, King Sejong commissioned someone to invent a phonetic alphabet they could call their own. The result was hangul which has been called the crown jewel of alphabets it’s that easy to learn. The symbols that represent the sounds are shaped into syllable blocks after the form of Chinese characters. The shape of the strokes that form the consonants are meant to look like the shape that the linguistic apparatus, i.e. tongue and lips, takes when forming these sounds. With 14 consonants and 10 vowels, it is said that a student of Korean can master the alphabet and be reading Korean in about two weeks. Reading, yes but understanding? Ahhh. That’s a different story altogether!

From the Center for East Asian Studies, this is Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.