Three days ago (10/9) was Hangul Day, a celebration that Seonghye taught us about during our class yesterday. She showed us a video that explained the origin of the holiday and typically how it is celebrated. In 1446, King Sejong of the Choson Dynasty invented the common native writing system of Korean. Previously, Chinese characters had been used for reading and writing, but was spoken using original Korean phonetics. Learning these characters was very difficult and required an education, which was not accessible to most agriculture workers due to the time and the money. Thus King Sejong created a simple writing system that was easy for everyone to learn. For the vowels, he utilized three basic configurations, a vertical line representing a human, a horizontal line representing earth, and a dot representing the sky. When put all together, you get all the vowel characters. People celebrate Hangul Day to show gratitude to King Sejong for his contribution to the native Korean language. On 10/9 those in Korea often go to the King Sejong museum and visit his golden statue. His picture is even on the 10,000 won bill.
https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/happy-hangul-day
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