Hangul

The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Hangeul in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern writing system for the Korean language. It has been described as a syllabic alphabet as it combines the features of alphabetic and syllabic writing systems, although it is not an abugida.

Consonants
Letters in the Korean alphabet are called jamo (자모). Hangul has 19 consonants, 14 of which are "base consonants" and 5 of which are doubled versions of other consonants (known as "doubled" letters in South Korea and "strong" letters in North Korea). However, they are considered separate letters from the un-doubled version. Letters can change in pronunciation depending on if they appear in initially or finally in a syllable. The pronunciation can also be affected by the surrounding letters, but only the "basic" pronunciation is given on this page.

1 ㅇ can be written as ' or not written at all.

ㅇ is silent syllable-initially and is used as a placeholder when the syllable starts with a vowel. ㄸ, ㅃ, and ㅉ are never used syllable-finally.

Hangul is a featural alphabet and the shapes of the consonants represent the places of articulations.
 * ㄱ (k) is a side view of the tongue raised toward the soft palate. ㅋ (kʰ) is the same with a stroke for a burst of aspiration.
 * ㅅ (s) represents a side view of the teeth. The line topping ㅈ (tɕ) represents firm contact with the roof of the mouth. The stroke on ㅊ (tɕʰ) represents a burst of aspiration.
 * ㄴ (n) is a side view of the tongue raised toward the alveolar ridge. The line on ㄷ (t) represents firm contact with the roof of the mouth. The stroke on ㅌ (tʰ) represents the burst of aspiration. The top of ㄹ (ɾ) represents a flap of the tongue.
 * ㅁ (m) represents the outline of the lips in contact with each other. ㅂ (p) represents the release burst. The stroke of ㅍ (pʰ) represents a burst of aspiration.
 * ㅇ is an outline of the throat. ㅎ (h) has a stroke representing a burst of aspiration (it was derived from ㆆ, a now obsolete letter).

Vowels
There are 21 vowels, some of which are monophthongs and some are diphthongs. There is some disagreement about how many monophthongs are in Korean, but it is as many as 10 or as few as 8.

The Korean language In the 15th century the Korean language had vowel harmony to a greater extent than it does today. Vowel harmony was described in terms yin and yang: The yin vowels were ㅡ, ㅜ, ㅓ (eu, u, eo). The yang vowels were ㆍ, ㅗ, ㅏ (ə, o, a). The neutral vowel was ㅣ (i) and could coexist with yin vowels and yang vowels.

The design of vowels are based on this description of vowel harmony:
 * A horizontal line representing the flat Earth (yin).
 * A dot for the sun in the heavens (yang). This has become a short stroke in modern writing.
 * A vertical line for a human, the neutral mediator between the heaven and earth.

The yin, yang, and human strokes can be applied to one of two 'base graphics' (ㅡ and ㅣ). A full understanding of what these horizontal and vertical groups had in common would require knowing the exact sound values these vowels had in the 15th century, but it is generally believed that horizontal vowels (ㅗ, ㅜ, ㅡ) were at one point mid-high back vowels and vertical vowels (ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅣ) were at one point low vowels. Additional dots (later becoming short strokes) were added to derive additional vowels.

Compound vowels are formed from two simple vowel letters and were originally diphthongs, though several have since become monophthongs. To represent /w/ in a compound vowel the letter for /o/ or /u/ was used.

Syllable blocks
The letters are arranged into syllable blocks. A syllable block always contains at least an initial letter (though the initial letter may be silent) and one medial letter. The way the letters are arranged in the block is determined by shape of the medial.

Vowels (medials) are written under and/or to the right of the the initial consonant. If the vowel is horizontal (such as ㅡ), then it is written under the initial (example 1). If it is vertical (such as ㅣ), then it is written to the right of the initial (example 2). If it is a compound vowel with both orientations (such as ㅢ) then it wraps around the initial on the bottom and the right (example 3).

If a final consonant is present, it's always written at the bottom, under the vowel.

If the final vowel is a consonant cluster the two vowels are written left to right.

Blocks are always written in phonetic order, initial-medial-final.

Block shape
Normally, Hangul uses the East Asian tradition of square block characters, which has the following rules:
 * Do not stretch the initial consonant vertically, but leave white space below if there's no lower vowel and/or no final consonant.
 * Do not stretch right-hand vowels vertically, but leave white space below if there's no final consonant. (Often the right-hand vowel extends farther down than the left-hand consonant.)
 * Do not stretch final consonant horizontally, but leave white space to its left.
 * Do not stretch or pad each block to a fixed width, but allow kerning (variable width) where syllable blocks with no right-hand vowel and no double final consonant can be narrower than other blocks.

Some recent fonts break one or more of these rules and move towards more European practices for letter width and whitespace.

In Korean, typefaces that do not have a fixed block boundary size are called 탈네모 글꼴 (tallemo geulkkol, "out of square typeface"). If horizontal text in the typeface ends up looking top-aligned with a ragged bottom edge, the typeface can be called 빨랫줄 글꼴 (ppallaetjul geulkkol, "clothesline typeface"). Such fonts have been used on signs or headings, but not for large volumes of body text.

There was a minor and unsuccessful movement in the early 20th century to abolish syllabic blocks (known as 모아쓰기 (moa-sseugi 'assembled writing')) and write the letters individually and in a row, like in the Latin alphabet. For example, 한글 (Hangeul) would be written as ㅎㅏㄴㄱㅡㄹ. This is called 풀어쓰기 (pureo-sseugi 'unassembled writing').

Creation
Prior to the creation of Hangul, Koreans primarily wrote using Hanja (Chinese characters used to write Korean). However the difficulty in learning Chinese characters, and the fact that Chinese characters were not well suited to the Korean language, meant that many lower class Koreans were illiterate. To promote literacy among the common people, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, Sejong the Great, created a new alphabet. The alphabet was designed so that people with little education could learn to read and write. A popular saying about the alphabet is, "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; even a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."

The alphabet was completed in late December 1443 or January 1444. Afterwards a document titled Hunminjeong'eum (The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People), after which the alphabet was originally named, was written, which explained the origin and purpose of Hangul and provided examples and explanations. The publication date of the Hunminjeong'eum, October 9, became Hangul Day in South Korea. Its North Korean equivalent, Chosŏn'gŭl Day, is on January 15.

Opposition
After its creation the Korean alphabet faced opposition by the literary elite. They believed Hanja was the only legitimate writing system. They also saw the circulation of the Korean alphabet as a threat to their status. However, the Korean alphabet entered popular culture as King Sejong had intended, used especially by women and writers of popular fiction.

King Yeonsangun banned the study and publication of the Korean alphabet in 1504, after a document criticizing the king was published. Similarly, King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun, a governmental institution related to Hangul research, in 1506.

Revival
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries there was a revival of Hangul, especially in poetry and fiction novels. However, by this time the spelling had become quite irregular.

By the 19th century, thanks to growing Korean nationalism, the Gabo Reformists' push, and Western missionaries' promotion of the Korean alphabet in schools and literature, the Hangul Korean alphabet was adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894.

Reforms
After the Japanese annexation, in 1910, Japanese was made the official language of Korea. However, the Korean alphabet was still taught in Korean schools and Korean was written in a mixed Hanja-Hangul script. Though earlier Korean literature was banned from public schooling.

Korean orthography was partially standardized in 1912. The vowel arae-a (ㆍ), which by then had disappeared from Korean, was restricted to Sino-Korean roots. The emphatic consonants were standardized to ㅺ, ㅼ, ㅽ, ㅆ, ㅾ and the final consonants were restricted to ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ. Long vowels were marked by a diacritic dot to the left of the syllable, but this was dropped in 1921. A second colonial reform occurred in 1930. The arae-a was abolished, the emphatic consonants were changed to ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ and more final consonants were allowed.

Japan banned the Korean language from schools and public offices in 1938 and excluded Korean courses from the elementary education in 1941 as part of a policy of cultural genocide.

The modern Korean orthography was published in 1946, just after Korean independence from Japanese rule. In 1948, North Korea attempted to make the script perfectly morphophonemic through the addition of new letters, and in 1953, Syngman Rhee in South Korea attempted to simplify the orthography by returning to the colonial orthography of 1921, but both reforms were abandoned after only a few years.