Hangeul Day is on October 9th - a commemorative day to celebrate the introduction of hangeul(한글) in Korea, the language that Koreans use today. However, I wanted to shift focus onto a couple of cultural artifacts - “Hunminjeongeum Haerye” and "Hunminjeongeum Eonhae". When King Sejong developed hangeul, he, along with other scholars, published the “Hunminjeongeum Haerye” that went indepth to explain the principles of the Hangeul language system. This “Haerye” would further help other scholars to study the language and properly use it, boosting the linguistic application of Hangeul. One issue - it was in Hanja - chinese characters. Even though Korea had just gotten its own language, many scholars and nobles were acclimated to their original writing/language system - a system that was heavily dependent on Chinese. Eventually, it was translated into Hangeul as the “Eonhae” version.
These two documents are no doubt critical to Korea’s cultural history - and to linguists, these are as good as sacred texts. However, “Haerye” was lost throughout history, and the Japanese colonization destroyed a lot of the references to these documents. It was in 1940 when a wealthy art collector named Jeon Hyeong-pil would pay the price of numerous houses for “Haerye”, and for the first time in history, “Haerye” and “Eonhae” has been reprinted as a pair this past week. These reprints mimic the ancient documents - using the same materials and keeping the same look to the originals.
It was cool to learn about these Korean linguistic treasures - it gives me a better sense of appreciation for Hangeul and its history.
Comments
I already knew that October 9th is Hangeul Day, but did not know about the Hunminjeongeum Eonhae and Hunminjeongeum Haerye. It is very interesting to have two different versions of documents explaining the principles of the Hangeul language system.