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| An old style of Korean typewriter, seen in 2015 at a closed university building. Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar |
By Matt VanVolkenburg
Hangeul Day's existence as an official national holiday began only six years ago, reflecting the high regard in which the Korean alphabet system is held. But it was not always this way, even after Japan's control of Korea ended and the Republic of Korea was founded. Attempt to move away from the use of Chinese characters to exclusive use of Hangeul prompted protests in the late 1960s, in part because mastery of Chinese characters was seen as the mark of an educated person.
In December 1969, the Supreme Court set guidelines for the exclusive use of Hangeul on property and family registration documents, which was to be implemented in 1970. Government offices were also to be identified by signs in Hangeul.
The Korea Times quoted the owner of a Seoul trading company arguing against this in an article dated Dec. 7, 1969, saying it was "nonsense to sweep away all the Chinese names of the key offices now that Korea is striving to enhance her diplomatic and trade relations with the world." Chinese characters, he claimed, helped Japanese and Chinese visitors find their way around Seoul. President Park Chung-hee came to the same conclusion and ordered that signs at such offices be in Hangeul, Chinese characters and English.
To facilitate the "mechanization" of Hangeul, in July 1969 the Ministry of Science and Technology tried to do away with five different keyboard systems for Hangeul typewriters by introducing the Korean Standard Keyboard. The ministry estimated in 1970 that there were 300,000 of these typewriters in use, with 80 percent of them found in government offices. One reason for their limited use was that the typewriters were expensive, in part because of the cost of converting English typewriters to Hangeul ones. As well, not everyone followed government guidelines, leading many offices to continue using non-standard keyboards and forcing business schools to teach typing on three different keyboards.
In early 1970, the Ministry of Education prohibited the teaching of Chinese characters in all primary, middle and high schools. This prompted protests, such as in November 1970 when 100 writers, historians and other scholars held a rally at the Seoul Press Center. They argued the policy would lower people's intelligence level, which would result in cultural decline. Knowledge of Chinese characters would facilitate an understanding of the etymology of Korean words and preserve Korea's cultural heritage, they said. "It is a mistake," they argued in a Korea Times article on Dec. 13, 1970, "to think that learning Chinese characters in schools is detrimental to the maintenance of jucheseong (independence)."
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| Korea Times Archive July 26, 1970 |
The Korea Times reported that they were "waging a solitary battle" and that most people supported the exclusive use of Hangeul. One reason for this may be that being too vocal in opposing the policy could bring negative consequences. One professor at Chungnam National University was fired for his strident opposition, but was reinstated following a lawsuit.
The Korea Times took a middle-ground stance. On Hangeul Day in 1971, an editorial argued the need for "exclusive use of our own characters to be realized someday in the future," but opposed a "hasty" adoption of exclusive Hangeul use and urged the education authorities to "pay close heed to the voices of the general public."
That year, 20 academic societies recommended teaching of Chinese characters starting in elementary school, and the government soon appointed the National Academy of Science (NAS) to conduct a policy review. The NAS agreed with the academics, and claimed the desire to use Hangeul exclusively was "a policy resulting from impromptu nationalism." It was even claimed that Hangeul use had "caused a retrogression in the ability to think and reason."
This angered professor Huh Woong, the chairman of the Korean Language Research Society, who was quoted in The Korea Times on Oct. 10, 1971, as saying, "Who can dare to say that a policy designed to protect Korean culture and literature from being invaded by Chinese influence has come from an impromptu nationalism?" He added, "Those elite groups who support the restoration of Chinese character education are a minority full of…outdated snobbishness."
In a column a week later, Sungkyunkwan University student Kim Yong-su argued that because Koreans were "not Chinese at all" and Chinese characters were "not suitable for us," there was "no reason why we should hand down difficult Chinese characters to our descendants."
This debate continued for decades. Despite government reversals, exclusive use of Hangeul in Korean language teaching carried the day, fulfilling, as the Korea Times' 1971 Hangeul Day editorial put it, "the great task of the inventor-king who had defied alien influence courageously and took a resolute stand against the domineering use of Chinese characters."
Matt VanVolkenburg has a master's degree in Korean studies from the University of Washington. He is the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr.
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