Author: Our team Zhang Lan
First of all, I would like to pay a new year to the brothers and sisters of the Asahi Society
Then solemnly say sorry to everyone, originally today Lao Zhang prepared to be more of an ancient life article, to add color to the Spring Festival, but during the New Year there are many things, the new article typing until late at night, always feel that it can be rich, so it has been repeatedly modified many times, and now it is still being revised, here to apologize to everyone first.
In addition, today I heard about a somewhat angry incident. A few "experts and scholars" of a certain "big East Asian country" actually jumped out to "grab the Spring Festival" after "grabbing Hanfu" with China. In addition, all of our articles on the subject of the Korean War are often insulted and attacked by "fans of a certain East Asian power drama". Therefore, for issues such as "grabbing the Chinese New Year", which actually does not need to debate right and wrong, Lao Zhang also decided to reissue an old article from 2021 to talk about the ups and downs of Chinese characters in our neighboring countries for a period and a half century. Believing in this period of history is enough to refute many things. Expect more criticism and correction.
In the second half of the 20th century, one of the major events in the cultural history of East Asia was the "abolition of Chinese characters in Korea".
As early as 1948, South Korea's "Constituent Assembly" passed the "Korean Character Special Law", and in 1957, the Korean Ministry of Culture and Education promulgated 1300 "temporary limited Chinese characters". By 1970, the South Korean government, of which Park Chung-hee was president, had adopted a simple and crude policy of banning the teaching of Chinese characters in elementary schools and changing it to "fully implementing Korean education." In order to express his determination to "abolish Chinese characters", Park Chung-hee also took off the Chinese character plaques on many Korean scenic spots and monuments and forcibly replaced them with Korean versions, with a very resolute attitude.
Since then, the "Chinese characters" that once spread throughout the streets and alleys of major cities in South Korea have almost disappeared, and the use of Chinese characters by the Korean news media today has dropped to 24 percent, and publications such as the Korean National Daily have almost "not used a Single Chinese Character". In its place is the Korean proverb, which we are familiar with.
In Seoul, the capital of South Korea in 1949, Chinese characters were once everywhere.
At first glance, it seems that South Korea's "de-Hanhua" is relatively successful. But the pain behind this is well known in South Korea. First of all, in South Korea, it is so easy to "abolish" Chinese characters?
The history of the use of Chinese characters on the Korean Peninsula dates back to the Western Han Dynasty in China. Regimes such as the Silla Kingdom, the Goryeo Kingdom, and the Korean Kingdom on the Korean Peninsula used Chinese characters as official scripts for a long time, until January 1895, when the Lee Dynasty of Korea began to write official documents in Korean. After this long history, "Chinese characters" have long penetrated into all aspects of Korean culture, and Chinese characters account for 70% of the Korean vocabulary alone. This is why in the "original Korean" Korean drama, it is common to jump out of the "Chinese character word".
Completely abolish Chinese characters? No kidding, then I really don't know how to talk.
(Regarding the problem of eating, drinking and having fun during the Spring Festival, friends are also welcome to revisit our video, I believe that we can talk a lot more during the Spring Festival party)
The South Korean government's "abolition of Chinese characters" in 1970 also brought about a serious consequence: it affected the historical and cultural inheritance of the Korean Peninsula. You know, at least in the history of the Korean Peninsula in the past thousand years, the vast majority of historical texts, documents and even literary works are written in Chinese characters. Don't know Chinese characters? It really didn't even understand the "good stuff left by the old ancestors". Therefore, after the "abolition of Chinese characters", there have also been some ironic things in the Korean cultural circles: many liberal arts college students not only can't understand the classics, but also can't even understand the place names of scenic spots and monuments...
Even because of the "problem of using Chinese characters", on the eve of the 2010 South Korean "Gwanghad Festival", there was an embarrassing incident: at that time, in order to celebrate the "Gwanghak Festival", South Korea renovated the Gwanghwamun Gate, a representative building of the Joseon Kingdom era, but the reconstructed Gwanghwamun plaque should be in Chinese characters or Korean? This matter was quarreled in South Korea, and finally the words of the Korean Cultural And Financial Affairs Agency were finalized: "Although we respect the excellence of the Korean language, in principle, we still respect the prototype of cultural relics." "You must use Kanji!"
Even in today's everyday customs in Korea, Chinese characters sometimes play an indispensable role. Typical is "wedding". According to Korean wedding customs, guests should write their names on the red envelopes in Chinese characters when giving wedding gifts to show solemnity and respect. However, due to years of "de-Chinese characterization", sometimes guests can't write Chinese characters, sometimes they just write, and the bride and groom don't know each other. According to a young Korean who helped his brother organize the wedding, it was really "always embarrassed, several times in a cold sweat."
A well-known South Korean media also asked: "Chinese characters are still widely used in Korean wedding and funeral ceremonies, what if they are all replaced by proverbs (Korean)?" ”
Indeed, to many people, it seems that changing to Korean is nothing. In fact, this is another thing that the Korean cultural circles have been complaining about for a long time, don't look at a few Korean publications, dare to take the lead in trying "all in Korean". But this Korean is generally not easy to use.
The first thing that needs to be made clear is that today's Korean originated from the "Training of the People's Zhengyin" promulgated by the Kingdom of Korea during the orthodox years of the Ming Dynasty. The king of Joseon at the time, Lee Ki, was also revered as the "Inventor of the Korean Language". However, Li Qi explained at that time that he promulgated the "Training of the People's Zhengyin" not to eliminate Chinese characters, but to "make it easier for everyone to learn and convenient for daily use", that is, to make it easier for everyone to learn Chinese characters. Modern Korean scholars are more recognized: Chinese characters and Korean have always been common, especially because Korean vocabulary contains 70% of Chinese characters, so learning Chinese characters well, Korean literature is very easy. De-Kanjiization? I can't learn Korean well either.
And this Korean, which is "excellent" in the mouths of korean cultural and financial agency officials, is also recognized as having a problem with itself: the Korean language from the "Training Of The People's Zhengyin" is composed of 10 vowels and 14 zinels, and the advantage is that it is easy to read and easy to learn. Even foreigners who don't know Korean can use it as long as they master the spelling rules. It's a big problem when it's usable — Korean is a phonetic script, and it doesn't have four-tone variations like Chinese characters. Therefore, if you encounter homophones with homophones, if you do not use Chinese characters and only use Korean, you basically rely on guessing.
For a simple example, surnames such as "Liu & Yu", "Zheng & Ding", "Lin & Ren" are all homophones in Korean, and if they are simply spelled in Korean, it is easy to cause misunderstanding. That's why on big occasions like "weddings" in South Korea, guests need to write their names in Kanji – at least not without going wrong.
Many everyday words in Korean are also easy to "oolong" in Korean. For example, the words "water release" and "waterproof", if they are all spelled in Korean, not only are they exactly the same in pronunciation, but also written in exactly the same way. These two words are "exactly the same" in Korean, and there are words such as "defense" and "anti-embroidery". Such "oolong" sometimes caused serious consequences: in the construction of the Beijing-Puo high-speed railway in South Korea in 2010, because the construction party mistakenly mistook the Korean word "waterproof" on the sleeper for "releasing water", it foolishly added water absorption materials to the sleepers, which directly led to 150,000 sleepers becoming defective products...
The common "oolong" in these Koreans can only be used to avoid mistakes to the greatest extent by adding Chinese characters. Therefore, in today's Korean characters, "mixed use of Chinese characters and Korean characters" has become the norm. Although the proportion of Chinese characters in the Korean news media has dropped to 24 percent, and some media claim to "completely abandon Chinese characters", in most cases, Chinese characters really cannot be used, and it is easy to cause big problems without using them.
Because of these "bitter" things, since the "rough abolition of Chinese characters" in South Korea in 1970, the Korean cultural circles have been divided into two major factions, one is the "resolute abolition of Chinese characters" faction, these people feel that South Korea's "waste Chinese characters" are not enough, criticizing Chinese characters as "difficult to recognize, difficult to read, difficult to remember and difficult to write", not as good as "Korean exclusive". The other school is the "mixed use school", which believes that Chinese characters have a strong ability to create words, which can make up for the lack of Korean to the greatest extent, and chinese characters are "oriental national characters", which is South Korea's "quasi-national characters", and if Chinese characters are not used, South Korea will be "self-isolated" in East Asia. Whenever the political situation in South Korea changes, the two factions will quarrel.
In the past three decades, there has been another important factor influencing South Korea's attitude toward Chinese characters – China's strength.
With the normalization of Sino-South Korean relations in the 1990s and the rapid development of China's economy, Chinese characters are gaining more and more influence in the world, and many countries have set off a "Chinese fever" and a "Chinese character fever". Confucius Institutes, which currently span more than 150 countries around the world, have led to more than 100 million overseas learning Chinese characters by 2019. For countries around the world, "strengthening the learning of Chinese characters" has become a recognized trend.
Such a trend, as the scholar Pang Qingxiang sighed: "Today, when China's national strength is getting stronger and stronger, the Chinese character fever in these countries is heating up day by day." And that may be just the beginning."
Since the end of the last century, all walks of life in South Korea have felt very strongly about this general trend: especially for the Korean business community, more than 40% of South Korea's goods should be exported to the "Chinese Character Culture Circle", and 70% of South Korea's tourists also come from the "Chinese Character Culture Circle". A China with increasingly strong international influence is an important target for South Korea's future dealings in the field of political experience. Completely de-Kanji? That is not only "self-isolation", but also self-determination of the future.
Therefore, since 2003, 190,000 companies under the five major economic groups in South Korea have to take Chinese language tests when recruiting, and "writing 1,000 Chinese characters" and "knowing 1817 Chinese characters" are hard bars. Since 2005, Chinese characters have been restored to South Korea's official documents and traffic signs. In 2009, 20 former South Korean prime ministers collectively petitioned the South Korean government to resume Chinese character education in primary schools.
On March 23, 2010, in order to protest the "de-Chinese characterization" behavior of the South Korean Ministry of Education in the revision plan of the college entrance examination, the Korean Han Chinese Education Association held a large-scale rally, in which teachers and students from all over South Korea not only angrily condemned the absurd acts of the South Korean government, but also put up a slogan that shocked the audience: Long live Hanwen!
The most important change is in the field of education: in South Korea today, Kanji is part of the "Creative Experience" activity in elementary schools, and junior high school usually has an hour of Kanji lessons a week. In high school, there are often Chinese classes in the second semester, two lessons per week, and 1800 "basic Chinese characters for education" to be learned. In the field of universities, there are as many as 150 universities in South Korea that offer Chinese courses. It can be said that for every Korean "student party", "Chinese characters" are an important part of their academic career.
After the normalization of Sino-Korean relations, South Korea also has the famous "National Chinese Character Ability Appraisal Examination", which is divided into eight grades of 1-8. Grades 7 and 8 are often children's participation, and it is good to master 50 to 150 words, but if you want to pass the 1 level, you must master 2500 words. As long as you can pass the 3rd level (master 1800 words) or more, you can not only replace the paper in school, but also have an important advantage in corporate recruitment, and the higher the level, the greater the advantage.
Such a scene also constitutes the strange attitude of Koreans to "Chinese characters" today: on the one hand, in the news media, the "proportion" of Chinese characters has decreased significantly, but in the public domain, the use of Chinese characters has gradually increased, and the use of Chinese characters in Korean papers, official documents, and reference books is also significantly high. As for the customs of daily life, Chinese characters are still often indispensable.
In fact, behind all this, the question of "how Koreans view Chinese characters" is also clearly a mirror: it not only reflects the thick historical inheritance of the "Chinese character cultural circle", but also witnesses the rapid development of New China and the history of increasingly strong international influence.
References: Pang Qingxiang,"How far can Korea's "De-Chinese Characterization" Go", Haiwen 'Korea: The Curse of Abolishing Chinese Characters', Wan Xiaoli's "The Use of Chinese Characters in Korea and Its Inheritance", Lee Shou-ho's "Investigation and Analysis of The Chinese Character Concept of Korean High School Students", Yin Lingwei's "Current Situation, Problems and Suggestions of Chinese Language Teaching in Korean Universities", Feng Weiwei's "It Is Really Not Easy to Want to "De-Chinese Characterization"", Tian Fang's "The Cultural Impact of Chinese Characters on Korea from the Perspective of Korea's Cultural Crisis", Wu Jingsi's "Current Situation and Teaching Suggestions for Chinese Character Teaching in Korean High Schools", Liu Li, "Research on the Current Situation of Chinese Language International Education at Home and Abroad and the "1+2" Concept", Bird World, "Under the Lens: Seoul, the Capital of South Korea in 1949"