Korean is a really unique language in which phonetics makes up the entire writing system, so in order to speak or read you need to have a firm understanding of phonetics. A historical tall tale on how the Hangul, the Korean writing system, was created because King Se-jong the Great wanted all of his citizens to be literate. So he invented Hangul after looking at his tongue in the mirror, basing the written alphabet after the mouth and tongue placement of each sound used in Korean. This is incredible because it directly coincides with the Anatomy of Phonetic Articulation and during 1443 they did not have the technology to see X-rays or MRIs of the tongue's movement.
To briefly explain this system, the ㄱ (g) sound is created when our tongue rests on the vellum, so the character was designed to look like the tongue in the position of the sound ㄱ. The same format follows for the ㅇ (o) sound where our rounded lips saying the letter resembles the character ㅇ. The ㄷ (d) sound is created when our tongue creates a tap on our teeth, so our tongue and teeth form a ㄷ shape.
Korean also has characters based on stress so ㄱ, when stressed, is ㄲ, ㅈ becomesㅉ, and ㅂ->ㅃ. A couple of examples would be 뽀뽀 /p͈o̞p͈o̞/ versus 밥 /pa̠p̚/ and 바깥 /pa̠k͈a̠t̚/ versus 고기 /ko̞ɡi/ where we can see how important stress is in pronunciation. I am hoping to continue to acquire the differentiation of these sounds be immersing myself in the language. I also think it is incredibly important to look at the exact spelling in hangul because the characters themselves tell you how to pronounce the word.
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