Special Report From Bangul to Hangul, 100 Years of the Script That Liberation Gave a Name

The name of the script promulgated by King Sejong in 1446 was not Hangul but Hunminjeong-eum. It means "the correct sound to teach the people," yet the script itself was not called by its own name for nearly five hundred years. Those educated in Chinese characters called it Eonmun, meaning vulgar script, and also called it "bangul." In an era when the speech of children who had not learned the complex formal and informal endings was called "banmal," writing with Hunminjeong-eum was treated as an admission of being an ignorant commoner.

The name first changed in 1894. After the Sino-Japanese War, Hunminjeong-eum was called "Gungmun," meaning the nation's script, but upon losing national sovereignty, that position was taken by Japan's kana, and Hunminjeong-eum was demoted to "Joseonmun," the script of the colony. In 1913, Ju Si-gyeong gave it a new name, "Hangul," meaning "great script, complete script," but it took another decade or so for this name to take root.

The turning point came a hundred years ago. On November 4, 1926, members of the Joseon Language Research Society and Sinminsa gathered at a restaurant called Sikdowon in Seoul to hold a commemorative ceremony honoring the 480th anniversary of the promulgation of Hunminjeong-eum, and designated the name of the day to be commemorated annually as "Gagyajeol." The name reflected concerns that the order ga-na-da-ra would be indistinguishable from Japan's kana. The following year, when the Joseon Language Research Society launched its journal "Hangul," both the commemorative day and the name of the script settled as Hangul. The Japanese Government-General of Chosŏn never acknowledged this name, and Hangul regained the status of the nation's script only after the establishment of the Republic of Korea government and the confirmation of the principle of exclusive use of Hangul in official documents.

Jeon Woo-yong, chairman of the Sejong Institute Foundation, reflected on this history in a social media post on the 8th, a day before Hangul Day, stating, "When the members of that time rejected both the name Hunminjeong-eum and the name Joseonmun and declared the new name Hangul, it was an expression of the will to liberate itself from medievalism and colonialism. The new name Hangul served to shed the shackles of class discrimination and ethnic discrimination that had bound this script." He emphasized this point.

This year's Hangul Day marks exactly 100 years since that name was proclaimed. What King Sejong created was a script, but what made that script everyone's was a name. This is why this Hangul Day, where the creation 580 years ago and the renaming 100 years ago overlap, is particularly special.