Detail

`December 3, 1981 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of Hangul Hakhoe, the Korean Language Society. Hangul, the Korean script, was created by King Sejong, who promulgated it in 1446 for the general public to learn and use in their daily lives. Before its creation, Chinese characters had been used, but their difficulty limited their use to a small number of educated people, leaving the majority illiterate. This unfortunate situation led to the King to resolve to develop an easy writing system himself which could be learned by any of his subjects. After many years of study and research, with assistance of his court scholars, he finally succeeded in inventing a system of phonetic signs called Hunminjungum which could be combined to represent all the sounds in the language. Its present name Hangul was given it later in modern times by Choo Shi-kyung, the great pioneer scholar of modern Korean linguistics. Hangul, hailed today bysome linguists as the most linguistic of any writing system ever invented, was, however, not accepted heartily by the sinologists and other Chinese-educated prople of his time and later times, who thought it to be too easy and so unworthy of learning. It was Hangul Hakhoe that was founded on December 3, 1921 in order to correct the deplorable phenomenon by studying and further developing Hangul and the Korean language in general. Among its memorable academic achievements are the proposing in 1933 of principles for unifying Korean spelling, the compiling and publishing in 1956 of the Great Korean Dictionary, and the revising in 1980 of Korean spelling. During the Japanese rule, Hangul Hakhoe`s academic activities were patriotic as well because Hangul was associated with the Korean soul and national independent spirit. Therefore, half of the six decades over which the Society has come is studded with the sufferings and trials that afflicted the Korean people as a whole. On this national occation of Hangul Hakhoe`s 60th anniversary, the Ministry of Communications takes pride in issuing a commemorative stamp in recognition of both its academic successes and its contribution to our unique cultural identity, and also in token of our wish for its continuing fruitful activities.`