The statements in this article are based on reliable sources and are repeated at the end of this article
During the feudal dynasty, Korea can be said to be one of the many vassal states of the Central Plains Dynasty, which was deeply influenced by Han culture, respecting the Han system, learning Chinese etiquette, and learning Chinese characters.
However, in modern times, it seems that it has been beaten a little too much, and South Korea's extreme inferiority complex has been transformed into extreme self-esteem, and it has vigorously carried out the "de-Chinese" campaign several times.
The statements in this article are based on reliable sources and are repeated at the end of this article
But what is surprising is that 1/4 of their constitution is still in Chinese, and the Korean ID cards are also Korean names, and there must be a Chinese name in parentheses.
So do Koreans really mess around without Chinese characters?
01
Chinese characters into Korea
To this day, it is not known when Chinese characters appeared on the Korean Peninsula, but by the time of the Western Han Dynasty, Chinese characters had been widely used there.
At that time, the three countries of the peninsula (Goguryeo, Silla, and Baekje) all regarded Chinese characters as common characters, so if Koreans looked at their own history, they would find that their ancient history books were marked with Chinese characters.
For thousands of years, Chinese characters dominated the Korean Peninsula until the Ming Dynasty.
During the Ming Dynasty, the situation on the Korean Peninsula also ushered in new changes, and the Li dynasty basically unified the peninsula and established a prosperous feudal dynasty, but they were still too far behind the Central Plains Dynasty, so they voluntarily became loyal vassals of China.
They even directly asked Lao Zhu to give them a country name to show their loyalty. So Lao Zhu took the "dawn of the morning" as the inspiration, that is: the country is located in the east, the first to welcome the glory of the morning, and personally gave the country the name: North Korea.
Moreover, the founder of North Korea, Li Chenggui, also moved the capital to Hanyang and deliberately renamed it Seoul, in order to fully express his devotion to Han Tongsu.
In those years, Koreans valued China's views on many things, and they even regarded their country as a branch of Chinese culture, proudly calling themselves "Little China".
02
The advent of Hangeul
By the time of Sejong Li You, he was worried that his Chinese language was not understood and that it was difficult for ordinary people to express their thoughts clearly.
So in 1443, he ordered a group of scholars to invent a script based on Chinese characters that was suitable for the local area and easier to spread, which was called "Hanwen", because of its shape, it was also called "window script".
As a pinyin script, it was originally called "Xunmin Zhengyin", with a total of 28 letters.
Hangul, a writing system tailored to the Korean language, quickly spread among Koreans because of its unusually smooth learning curve, and even geniuses could understand its mysteries in a day.
Despite this, in the face of the profound influence of Chinese civilization, Hanwen did not gain the favor of the Korean upper class from the beginning, and the scholars declared it to be inferior, fearing that the peninsula would be "barbarized" as a result.
Under the interference of the noble class, proverbs were only widely spread in the lower classes for a long time, and were not loved by the upper class aristocracy.
Korean writing was formed under the influence of Han culture from the beginning, and a complete system was not established, so even after many rounds of revisions, it still could not get rid of the dependence on Chinese characters.
03
Abolition of Chinese characters
In the wave of Japan's rapid rise, the Sino-Japanese Naval War at the end of the 19th century brought the island nation victory against the Qing Dynasty, thus gaining a certain dominant position in East Asia.
The Korean Peninsula, located between the geographically remote Japanese empire, was the primary target of Japanese aggression.
Japan's victory over Russia in 1905 strengthened its influence in Korea, culminating in the complete annexation of Korea in 1910. During this period, although the Korean proverb received the necessary attention and application, it never became the official language.
With the defeat and surrender of Japan in 1945, Korea was liberated, but under the influence of the international situation at that time, especially the oppression of Western powers, there was a trend of "the uselessness of Chinese characters" and "the theory of China's backwardness" in Korean society, and there were even voices calling for breaking away from Asia and moving closer to Europe.
It was against this background that the so-called Chinese character abolition association was established.
In 1945, the occupiers established temporary regulation of education in South Korea, with a new policy banning the use of Chinese characters in elementary and middle school textbooks and requiring government documents to be written in Korean, marking the beginning of the official phasing out of Chinese characters.
Then, in 1948, the Korean Constituent Assembly passed a law that affirmed the monopoly of Hangeul. Park Chung-hee, who took power through a military coup, further pushed for policy implementation, and demanded a complete ban on Chinese characters in the domestic publishing industry.
At a time when South Korea's economy was developing rapidly, China was still relatively backward, and Chinese characters became a pawn in South Korea's political wrestling. Some radical voices even advocate that South Korea should be completely Westernized, abandon the cultural traditions of Chinese characters in East Asia, and join the Western cultural camp with the United States as the core.
South Korea's desire to "break away from Asia and join Europe" can be seen, but the limitations of the Korean language itself and the profound influence of Chinese culture over the past 2,000 years make it not easy to break away from the influence of Chinese characters.
04
Endless drawbacks
From a linguistic point of view, Korean is a phonemic script that can be compared to the pinyin system of the Latin alphabet. Therefore, in Korean writing, even if the meaning of the words is different, it may appear to be the same spelling on the surface.
Korean is a derivative writing system, with up to 70% of the 510,000 Korean words being derived from Chinese characters. Listening to Koreans pronounce it in the traditional way is reminiscent of the dialects of southern China.
In practice, since a glyph in Korean may correspond to multiple meanings—for example, the Korean character "gao" may represent concepts such as "ancient", "bitter", "sue", and "kao" in different contexts, and there is no Chinese character as a distinction, which can easily lead to confusion in understanding.
This is especially true in their names, for example, South Korean parliamentarians A and B, named Kim Sung-tae and Kim Sung-tae respectively, are completely different in the writing and pronunciation of Chinese characters, but in Korean, they may be the same characters, so that the Korean parliament can only use the name of one of them in Chinese characters.
So we can see that Koreans have a Chinese name next to their ID cards.
Even the name can be mistaken, and the Korean language makes more mistakes in daily life.
For example, in 2010, when a railway was being built in South Korea, "due to the unclear meaning of the Korean language, the staff mistook waterproofing for water, resulting in 150,000 sleepers being wasted."
Therefore, 1/4 of the content of the "Constitution" of Xiaobangzi Country is in Chinese characters, and they cannot express it clearly by relying on Korean alone.
In 2005, South Korea finally regained its grip and said it would revert to the use of Chinese characters in traffic signs and official documents in order to cope with the next developments.
In 2009, a letter signed by 20 former South Korean government officials proposed to the government to strengthen education in Chinese characters.
In 2019, South Korea's Ministry of Education announced a striking new policy that textbooks for upper elementary school students will incorporate the teaching of Chinese characters and their pronunciation and meaning.
While the elimination of Chinese characters has made literacy easier in South Korea, it has also somewhat severed the country's ties to its own historical context.
Many ancient Korean documents and history books are written in Chinese characters, but many young people today find it difficult to grasp the meaning behind these historical texts because they do not understand Chinese characters, and they really have to abandon the culture and characteristics of their own country.
Reference Sources:
Earth Knowledge Bureau: Why don't Koreans use Chinese characters anymore?