The first writing system in Korea was called “Hanja”, and it used Chinese characters, a system that which only the rich and educated were able to use. King Sejong of the Joseon Dynasty wanted to create a language in which everyone-- young, poor, rich, uneducated, educated, old--- could learn easily. So he helped created the Korean writing system called Hangul in 1443. There is only 19 consonants and 21 vowels. The pronunciation of a word uses a combinations of the sounds used for each character in the word. In this way, it can be quite simple to read and say words in Korean once the basics of the alphabet is memorized.
There are three basic strokes: — , | , and ∙. These strokes make up the characters we say in modern Korean writing system. Each character needs a constant and a vowel, it cannot stand otherwise. Some characters sound the exact same-- the only differentiator is the emphasis place on the character. Korean writing system is not hard to learn: with practice and hard work it can be easy to master, and easy to write and read!
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