History of Hangul
history of the Korean alphabet
The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul internationally, Hangeul in South Korea, and Choson'gŭl in North Korea, is the native alphabet used to write the Korean language.
Before Hangul's creation, Korea had been using Hanja (Chinese characters) since antiquity. As Hanja was poorly suited for representing the Korean language, and because its difficulty contributed to high illiteracy, Joseon king Sejong the Great (r. 1418–1450) moved to create Hangul. The script was announced around late 1443 to early 1444 and officially published in 1446 via the text Hunminjeongeum and its companion commentary Hunminjeongeum Haerye. While Hangul saw gradual adoption among both the elite and commoners, it was looked down upon by the elite for centuries. It was only widely adopted in the late 19th century. It is now the predominant script for Korean in both Koreas and among the Korean diaspora. It is also used to write the Jeju language, and to a limited degree, the Cia-Cia language of Indonesia.
Background
Some time in antiquity, Korea adopted writing in the form of Hanja (Chinese characters). There is a legend that, before that, during the Old Chosŏn period and around the time of the legendary ruler Tan'gun, Koreans used another original script dubbed "Sinji".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “History of Hangul” is history of the Korean alphabet. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through History, Hangul and history, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q136706292. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1418, 1450, 1443 and 1444.
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This entry incorporates text from “History of Hangul” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.