Studies say that the Korean language belongs to Koreanic or is categorized as a language isolate. A language isolate means that it does not form a language family because there are no other similar languages to be grouped. Some scholars assert that the Korean language forms Koreanic along with the Jeju language, used on Jeju island. However, the mainstream, including UNESCO and ISO, denies this since the language used in Jeju island is closer to a dialect than a separate language, although most people who are not accustomed to the Jeju language do not understand it. Historically, the Korean language has been developed through Old Korean, Middle-age Korean, Modern Korean, and Contemporary Korean. Since there are a number of nations and thus dialects in Korea during the ancient era, there are some obstacles to establishing the study of Old Korean, not to mention lacking documents. While Middle-age Korean had four tones, affected by Chinese, Modern Korean, used from the 17th to 19th century, abandoned the tones and partially adopted Hangul, devised by Great King Sejong. While he created more characters than are used nowadays, some of which sound [f] and [v] in the English phonetic inventory, they are extinct both in colloquialism and writings. Contemporary Korean is used since the late 19th century and was affected by Japanese and other foreign languages during the Japanese colonial occupation. Colloquially, especially in terms of accent, Contemporary Korean has gone through major changes, which can be easily found in television interviews even 30 years ago.
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Hey Jason––
I really liked how you brought up King Sejong and the now-extinct characters. I had no clue that these were once a part of Korean, especially the fricative sounds which I found surprising since I don't really hear those in too many Asian languages. This makes me wonder why they eventually went extinct, and how long it took for these sounds/characters to fall out of favor.