Sejong’s preface to the 1446 Hunminjeongeum begins with the observation that “the sounds of our country’s language are different from those of the Middle Kingdom and are not confluent with the sounds of characters” — meaning that the Chinese characters (Hanja) that Korea had been using as a borrowed writing system for several centuries were structurally unsuited to the very different phonology of the Korean language, and that the resulting difficulty of learning to read had restricted literacy to the small fraction of the population (perhaps three to five percent, concentrated among the male aristocratic yangban class) that could afford the years of study required to master Hanja.
Discussion