There were two National Korean Holidays recently, and I thought I'd share a quick post about each.
(picture found on http://www.san-shin.org/Dan-gun_Myth.html)
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Thursday was Hangul Day (한글날) - a Korean holiday which commemorates the creation and usage of Hangul, the writing system for the Korean language. Hangul Day is celebrated on October 9th in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and on January 15th in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).
In short, Hangul was invented by King Sejong the Great (세종대왕), the scholar king of the Joseon Dynasty in 1443. The writing system was tailored to the Korean language so that it would be easy to learn and use, so that every Korean citizen could become literate without years of schooling. Chinese characters were used prior to this to write everything in Korean, with some modified characters used to express sounds and words absent in Chinese.
A National Hangul Museum opened this week, as part of Seoul's Hangul Day festivities, and we will be visiting it soon, once the "newness crowds" die down a bit.
For now, here is your brief lesson of the day, which you can compare to the chart above:
안 녕 하 세 요
An nyeong ha sae yo
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