201103628 Hana Choi
Hangul, the proud Korean language
1446 is one of the most meaningful years in Korean history. It is when King Sejong the great, the king of Joseon dynasty back then, distributed the Korean alphabet Hangul to his people. Despite many of his servants' oppositions during his making of the alphabet, he did not stopped working on it. That resulted in a huge difference in Korean politics, culture, and society. It improved political awareness among Korean citizens, made culture more flourish and inspired patriotism while the country was colonized by Japan.
The creation of Hangul let the ordinary people know the government issues. Before the king made Hangul, only Chinese characters were written and read in Korea. But very few privileged people such as civil servants or wealthy people had chance to study in the feudal society. So for others, the elite Characters were too difficult to learn and naturally people were not able to know what was going on around the country. The king who knew this wanted all of his subject to learn and use Hangul. The Korean alphabet was indeed a revolution to Koreans. Different from Chinese characters, Hangul was very easy to learn. After all of the Korean citizens regardless of age and sex commanded of Hangul, the chance of education grew. As people started to have ability to understand books and posters, the equality in getting information is realized. People grew power to think about the happenings in the government and at the same time ordinary people could criticize on the government and express their own feelings about politics freely.
Because the barrier of language was gone and people were educated, it was possible to have culturally more developed society than before. First, many Chinese writings were translated into Korean to many people could approach to readings easily. It caused more ordinary people, not only few privileged people, to create their own writings. Particularly when the book written for agricultural techniques is translated into Korean, farmers could figure out better agriculture methods suit for Korean geographical conditions. It increased the efficiency in farming. Also the ordinary people began to participate in creating works of arts. A large number of ordinary people from farmers to even Korean geisha who is called gisaeng wrote something in Korean and shared it with others. Since many high-quality arts reflecting Korean traditional values were came out, some of them are still found in historical sites and help us understand thoughts of our ancestors from different social classes.
Hangul also prevent people from losing patriotism during Japanese colonial era. Japan prohibited Koreans from using Hangul and if people had used Korean language they were punished. It is because Japanese knew every language has people's spirit and using Hangul would ruin their plan to make Koreans obey Japanese people. Although they forced us to learn only Japanese language lots of people tried to teach and learn Hangul secretly through making night school and distributing books or newspaper written in Korean language. This acts raised many patriots who fought for the independence of Korea. If there had not been Korean language there would not have been many movements of independence. Hangul is one of the main reasons how Korea recovered so quickly from terrible historical events so far amazing other countries.
The creation of Hangul had such huge influences in every part of Korea including people's approach to information, contribution to culture, and increasing patriotism. Even though Hangul made people's life much better, Koreans do not seem to be pleased to use Hangul that much. It is a shame that less and less people know the importance of Korean and even some people insist on taking English as the Korean official language. Korean people need to be thankful to use Hangul and feel pride to have Hangul.
To Hana Choi from Yujin Lee
ReplyDeleteHi, I really enjoyed your writing and let me give you my feedback^^!
1. I think there is a general thesis about the cause and effect in the introduction; it improved political awareness among Korean citizens, made culture more flourish and inspired patriotism while the country was colonized by Japan.
2. The three body paragraphs have each topic sentence that defines a specific cause and effect. The topic sentence of first body paragraph is ‘the creation of Hangul let the ordinary people know the government issues.’ And in the second body paragraph, the topic sentence is ‘Because the barrier of language was gone and people were educated, it was possible to have culturally more developed society than before.’ In the third body paragraph, the topic sentence is ‘Hangul also prevent people from losing patriotism during Japanese colonial era.’
3. I think the causes are well explained in logical way. Each body paragraph explains how the creation of Hangul affected Korean society, culture and history. For example, in the social aspect, since the Hangul was easy to learn, people from every social background could understand Hangul to get better understanding related to the social issues. And in the cultural aspect, because the language barrier no longer existed, people could accept and create culture more actively. Also in the historical aspect, since Hangul contained Korean spirit, it helped people to maintain the patriotism.
4. There are several connectors throughout the writing that show cause and effect; for instance, there are ‘Because’ and ‘Since’ in the second body paragraph.
5. There is a sentence that restates the causes in the conclusion; the creation of Hangul had such huge influences in every part of Korea including people's approach to information, contribution to culture, and increasing patriotism.
6. I can find a reflection in the conclusion; even though Hangul made people's life much better, Koreans do not seem to be pleased to use Hangul that much. It is a shame that less and less people know the importance of Korean and even some people insist on taking English as the Korean official language. Korean people need to be thankful to use Hangul and feel pride to have Hangul.
Thank you^^*!
201103628 Hana Choi
ReplyDeleteHangul, the proud Korean language
1446 is one of the most meaningful years in Korean history. It is when King Sejong the great, the king of Joseon dynasty at that time, distributed the Korean alphabet Hangul to his people. Despite many of his servants’ oppositions during his making of the alphabet, he did not stop working on it. That resulted in a huge difference in Korean politics, culture, and society. It improved political awareness among Korean citizens, made culture more flourish and inspired patriotism while the country was colonized by Japan.
The creation of Hangul let the ordinary people know the government issues. Before the king made Hangul, Chinese characters were written and read in Korea. But very few privileged people such as civil servants or wealthy people had chance to study in the feudal society. So for others, the elite characters were too difficult to learn and naturally people were not able to know what was going on around the country. The king who knew this wanted all of his subjects to learn and use Hangul. The distribution of Korean alphabet was indeed a revolution to a number of Koreans. Different from Chinese characters, Hangul was very easy to learn. After all of the Korean citizens regardless of age and sex commanded of Hangul, many people had a chance of education. As people started to have ability to understand books and notices from the government, the equality in getting information was realized. People grew power to think about the happenings in the government and at the same time ordinary people could criticize on the government and express their own feelings about politics freely.
Because the barrier of language was gone and people became more intelligent than before, it was possible to culturally develop society. First, some of Chinese writings were translated into Korean so many people could approach to readings easily. It caused more ordinary people, not only few privileged people, to create their own writings. A large number of ordinary people from farmers to even Korean geisha who was called gisaeng expressed their feelings in their writings like poems or short novels and shared them with others. The creation of writings brought other kinds of arts and there came out many pieces of high-quality arts reflecting Korean traditional values. There was also a big change in farming culture since the Chinese books written for agricultural techniques are translated into Korean. This allowed Korean farmers to figure out better agriculture methods suit for Korean geographical conditions.
Hangul also prevented people from losing eager for independence during Japanese colonial era. Japan prohibited Koreans from using Hangul and if people had used Korean language they were punished so harshly. It is because Japanese knew every language has people’s spirit and using Hangul would ruin their plan to make Koreans obey Japanese people. Although they forced us to learn only Japanese language lots of people tried to teach and learn Hangul secretly through making night school and distributing books or newspaper written in Korean language. This raised many patriots who fought for the independence of Korea. If there had not been Korean language there would not have been many movements of independence. Hangul is one of the main reasons how Korea recovered so quickly from the terrible historical events so far amazing other countries.
The creation of Hangul had such huge influences in every part of Korea including people’s approach to political information, contribution to culture, and increasing patriotism. Even though Hangul has made people’s life much better, Koreans do not seem to be pleased to use Hangul that much. It is a shame that less and less people know the importance of Korean and even some people insist on taking English as the Korean official language. Korean people need to be thankful to use Hangul and feel pride to have Hangul.