page_title: Korean language
section_title: Writing system
hierarchical_section_title: Korean language / Writing system
caption_attribution_description: 한국어: 원주 나들목의 영동고속도로 입구 표지판 English: Yeongdong Expressway Entrance Sign in Wonju Interchange 日本語: 原州(ウォンジュ)インタチェンジの嶺東高速道路の入口標識
context_page_description: The Korean language is an East Asian language spoken by about 77 million people. It is a member of the Koreanic language family and is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each country. It is a recognised minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia, and Central Asia.
  Historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate; however, it does have a few extinct relatives, which together with Korean itself and the Jeju language form the Koreanic language family. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in Manchuria.
context_section_description: Before the creation of the modern Korean alphabet, known as Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea and as Hangul in South Korea, people in Korea (known as Joseon at the time) primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years, including idu, hyangchal, gugyeol, and gakpil. However, due to the fundamental differences between the Korean and Chinese languages and the large number of characters to be learned, the lower classes, who often didn't have the privilege of education, had much difficulty in learning how to write using Chinese characters. To assuage this problem, King Sejong (r. 1418–1450) created the unique alphabet known as Hangul to promote literacy among the common people.
  The Korean alphabet was denounced and looked down upon by the yangban aristocracy, who deemed it too easy to learn, but it gained widespread use among the common class, and was widely used to print popular novels which were enjoyed by the common class. With growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, the Gabo Reformists' push, and the promotion of Hangul in schools, in 1894, Hangul displaced Hanja as Korea's national script. Hanja are still used to a certain extent in South Korea, where they are sometimes combined with Hangul, but this method is slowly declining in use, even though students learn Hanja in school.
  Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's symbols and their canonical IPA values:
  The letters of the Korean alphabet are not written linearly like most alphabets, but instead arranged into blocks that represent syllables. So, while the word bibimbap is written as eight characters in a row in English, in Korean it is written 비빔밥, as three syllable blocks in a row. The syllable blocks are then written left to right, top to bottom.
  Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese (except when Japanese is written exclusively in hiragana, as in children's books). Korean punctuation marks are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns, from top to bottom, right to left, but it is now usually written in rows, from left to right, top to bottom.
caption: The Latin alphabet used for foreigners in South Korea
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4608", "Image ImageLength": "3456", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES", "Image Make": "SAMSUNG", "Image Model": "WB350F", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 21.2 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2020:11:01 17:26:54", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "Copyright 2012", "Image ExifOffset": "372", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "990", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7327", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/20", "EXIF FNumber": "51/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:02:14 17:23:49", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:02:14 17:23:49", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "431/100", "EXIF ApertureValue": "117/25", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "117/25", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "467/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4608", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3456", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "864", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "262", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}