Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 443

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII
Korean Character
(Fig. 195, 6)
Mention should be made of the Korean character. It is, perhaps, not in its correct context, but it would be equally doubtful to fit it in elsewhere.
The Korean language is quite different from the Chinese. Chinese is monosyllabic (see p. 98 f.). Korean, on the contrary, is polysyllabic and agglutinative (see p. 170). By far the greater number of roots are either verbal stems or noun stems. Some scholars connect it with Japanese and with the Ural-Altaic languages, others with the Dravidian languages of India. However, the Koreans have been under Chinese cultural and political influence for many centuries, and, therefore, it is natural that they should have adopted Chinese writing. Local tradition attributes the introduction of the Chinese characters into Korea to Wan-shin (third century A.D.). For many centuries, all Korean writing was confined to the intricate system of the Chinese ideographic script (see Part I, Chapter VI). It is also not surprising that the Korean language, too, has been largely influenced by Chinese. Many Chinese words have been borrowed, especially those which are employed in literary essays by the higher classes. The pronunciation, however, is entirely different from that nowadays heard in China, and the Korean characters of Chinese origin differ from those employed in China.
Un-mun or On-mun
A totally different character is in use among the common. Koreans who are literate. It is called Ün-mun or Ön-mun, i.e., "vulgar." Whereas the Japanese facilitated the difficulties of the Chinese characters by the invention of their syllabaries (see p. 171 f.), the Koreans achieved a far higher stage by inventing a script which is practically an alphabet, and is easy to acquire and apply. Curiously enough, the higher social classes still prefer to use the characters of Chinese origin, but employ the Korean letters (similarly to the use in Japan of the kana-syllabaries, see p. 171) mainly to indicate terminations, and sometimes also the pronunciation, when it is ambiguous, i.e., when the word can be read either in Chinese or in Korean. It seems that mental culture in Korea has never had a national character, formed as it nearly always was along Chinese lines.
Thus, until recently all the official writing and the books of instruction were not in Korean, but in Chinese. Purely Korean literature was regarded with contempt, and was reserved for women and the illiterate. A Korean scholar of old, proud of his mastery of the very difficult Chinese characters, made it a point to appear ignorant of Korean script.
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