As the Koreans had no proper
writing system before the invention of Hangeul,
they had had to write their spoken language with
Chinese characters. This is generally called a
writing system with borrowed characters(借字表記).
It had been practically used long before the Chinese
phonology(聲韻學) was introduced in Korea. Fortunately
or unfortunately the Korean language and the Chinese
characters were not in harmony with each other.14)
Therefore, Korean ancestors had to ponder on the
proper method in writing Korean with the Chinese
characters. But they failed to get a desirable
result. Under these circumstances King Sejong,
who sincerely had felt this painful situation,
looked for a new turning-point, and finally reached
the invention of Hangeul.15)
King Sejong tried to invent a new writing system
which could replace the incomplete writing system
with borrowed characters, but he never brushed
away its experience and lesson. On the contrary,
he made the best of them in planning and inventing
a new writing system. It is because the basic
nature of the new writing system was suitable
for the purpose of the writing system with borrowed
characters. It is a very natural, rather than
extraordinary phenomenon, because a complaint
about an existing thing becomes a hope of the
new thing.
The Chinese character system is a writing system
representing both sense and syllable. So it has
quite a number of characters and complex strokes.
Those distinctions of the Chinese characters were
main factors which made the writing of Korean
incomplete and difficult. So they started to transform
those distinctions of the Chinese characters to
make them suitable for the Korean language shortly
after they began to use the writing system with
borrowed characters. From earlier times there
came about the attempt to simplify strokes and
to make the Chinese characters a phonetic alphabet.16)
It is needless to say that the analysis of Korean
and Chinese phones were needed and were in fact
carried out in such a process. In other words
even before the Chinese phonology was introduced
in Korea, they had had their own tradition of
phonological analysis. The awareness of a syllable-trichotomy
existed in earlier times on the traditional ground.
For example, such awareness can be ascertained
in the examples of a writing system with borrowed
characters in Shilla Dynasty period; 夜音 for 밤(pam),
去隱 for 간(kan) in which they could divide only
syllable codas such as ‘ㅁ’(m) and ‘ㄴ’(n) and used
the proper Chinese characters ‘音’ and ‘隱’ pronounced
as [?-m] and [?-n] respectively.
In this line of reasoning it could not be said
to be from a foreign theory or the personal creativity
of King Sejong, but from an age old experience
and lesson of the actual writing practice of Korean
which the blue-print of Hangeul and the principles
of making graphemes were derived. Even so, the
brilliant merits and efforts of King Sejong can
never be overlooked. Rather, we must think far
more highly of his problem-solving attitude which
was willing to meet the actual aspect face to
face. He got a lesson from actual experience and
finally settled all problems with a common and
easy methodology.
The author has so far reviewed the question of
where the originality and the scientific nature
found in the making principles were based. The
general answer to this question was acceptance
and developing a foreign theory from China. This
paper has tried to suggest a somewhat different
answer. The point is that the core of the founding
principles was derived from the actual experience
of writing Korean.
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