How Hangul Survived: From Scorn to Suppression to Celebration
Today Hangul is a source of national pride in Korea. For much of its history, though, it was not. The script was created in the 15th century, challenged almost immediately, pushed to the margins for hundreds of years, and later restricted under Japanese rule. The creation story itself is told in The Story of Hangul: How King Sejong Created the Korean Alphabet; this guide follows what happened next, and tries to stay accurate about what is well documented and what is often oversimplified. (To learn why the script is celebrated today, see Hangul Day: Why Korea Celebrates an Alphabet.)
1. Creation and the first objection (1443–1446)
King Sejong is credited with leading the creation of the script, announced in 1446 as Hunminjeongeum. Resistance came quickly. In 1444, a group of officials led by Choe Manri, a senior scholar at the Hall of Worthies, submitted a memorial to the king objecting to the new script. Their arguments included that Korea had always followed Chinese civilization and that having its own script risked putting it on the level of "barbarian" peoples, and that the effort would distract scholars from serious study.
The king disagreed and the project went on. This record matters because it shows that the objection came from within the educated elite, where status and learning were tied to mastery of classical Chinese.
2. A script for "everyone else" (15th–19th centuries)
For the next four centuries, official writing stayed in classical Chinese. Hangul did not disappear, but it lived in a different space. It was often called eonmun (언문, "vernacular writing"), a label that placed it below Chinese characters.
Even so, it never died out, because people had real uses for it:
- Translations of Buddhist and Confucian texts into Korean were produced with the support of the court in the early years.
- Women's writing. Letters, diaries, and household records were often written in Hangul, including by royal court women.
- Popular stories and novels circulated widely in the later Joseon period.
It also faced a direct setback: in 1504, King Yeonsan banned the study and use of the script after it was used to post criticism of him. The ban did not last, but it shows how a writing system with a wide audience could be seen as a threat.
3. A careful note on the "scorn" story
It is tempting to say that all yangban (the aristocratic class) despised Hangul and that it was only kept alive by the powerless. The truth is more mixed. Many scholars did look down on it as a lesser script, and Chinese characters stayed the symbol of status. But some royal family members and officials used and supported Hangul, and even high-ranking men wrote private letters in it. It is better to say that Hangul was excluded from official prestige writing than to say it was universally hated.
4. Moving into public life (1894–1910)
The turning point came in the late 19th century. In 1894, the Gabo reforms made Hangul (and mixed script) acceptable in official government documents. In 1896, the newspaper Tongnip Sinmun began publishing in Hangul and in English, with the linguist Ju Si-gyeong involved in the work of standardizing the script. Ju is also associated with popularizing the name "Hangul" in this period. The word is usually interpreted as meaning something like "the great script" or "Korean script."
5. Under Japanese rule (1910–1945)
After Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, the Korean language came under increasing pressure. Policies changed over time, and it is important to be precise: in the early decades, Korean was still taught in schools and used in publications, and Korean scholars worked on the language. Restrictions grew sharply in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when the colonial government pushed Japanese as the language of schools and public life and discouraged Korean.
During this same era, Koreans organized to protect and develop the script:
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1921 | The Korean Language Research Society (Joseon Eohakhoe) is founded. |
| 1926 | "Gagyanal" is first observed, the ancestor of today's Hangul Day. |
| 1933 | A unified Hangul spelling system is published, giving writers a common standard. |
| 1940 | The original Hunminjeongeum manuscript is acquired by the collector Jeon Hyeong-pil, who protected it through the war. |
| 1942 | The Joseon Language Society Incident: dozens of language scholars are arrested while compiling a dictionary. Several died or suffered greatly in custody. |
The scholars' work on a dictionary and standard spelling meant that when the colonial period ended, there was already a foundation to build on.
6. After 1945
After liberation, Hangul became the basis of education and public life in Korea. Hangul Day was set on October 9, and the script moved from the margins to the center. In the late 20th century, Hangul gained international recognition, including the 1997 UNESCO listing of the Hunminjeongeum Haerye.
What this story tells us
Hangul did not survive because it was protected from the start. It survived because ordinary people kept using it, scholars later worked to standardize it, and many people in the 20th century treated protecting it as part of protecting their culture. It is also a useful reminder for learners: the script is simple on purpose, and that simplicity is the reason it was so hard for any authority to stamp out.
Sources to check for dates and details: the National Hangeul Museum, the National Institute of Korean Language, and UNESCO's Memory of the World register for the Hunminjeongeum Haerye. Historians sometimes differ on exact dates and emphasis, so treat this as a summary rather than a full history.