Sejong the Great Proclaims Hangul

1443

The Joseon king and a quiet committee of scholars unveiled a twenty-eight-letter phonetic alphabet designed, he announced, so that a wise man could learn it in a morning and a fool in ten days. Confucian literati were horrified. Korean peasants, within a generation, could suddenly read their own complaints. Modern linguists have praised Hangul's scientific design, with consonant shapes mirroring tongue position, as perhaps the most rational writing system ever created.