Rediscovering Hangeul in Digital Era
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
In the full-fledged information and technology era, hangeul or the Korean alphabet is being reborn as various typefaces on the Internet and other digital devices.
Young Internet users buy hangeul fonts for their blogs and homepages, ushering in a time when people buy and sell various patterns of hangeul like a commercial product.
Why is hangeul becoming a buzzword in recent years? Hangeul is emerging as new cultural content in almost every sector. From fashion items to high-tech devices and even art, hangeul is a motif.
Shining in the Digital Era
If hangeul was highly appreciated as the effective functional writing system in the past, the information technology era hails hangeul as a ``blue ocean'' product with enormous industrial potentials.
The so-called "digital nomads'' who favor mobile equipment consume hangeul like a product. Yoo Han-tai, a professor teaching visual communications and information design to students at the Design Department of Sookmyung Women's University, said that he found great potential for hangeul with regards to industrial purposes.
"Hangeul is the perfect model for the digital age as its characteristics fit well in digital devices because of its simplicity and clearness,'' Yoo told The Korea Times.
Yoo explained that the speed of inputting hangeul into computers is seven-fold faster than those of Chinese characters and Japanese kanji.
He said hangeul uses a system that combines a few basic phonemes to form syllabic blocks in a standard computerization system, making it easier to fit in digital devices.
Digital gadgets ranging from auto navigation systems to computers and cellphones use keypads, which efficiently form syllables with additional strokes.
Korean cellphone keypads have the three basic vowels. But not all vowels are used on the keypads. Only the most basic and simplest vowels are used and the rest are achieved by adding strokes.
"Now, the younger generation want to have their own typefaces to express their own identity. Hangeul is a self-expression tool for many young people. They write a paper and send mobile phone messages and emails using their own favorite fonts like their handwritten calligraphy,'' Yoo said.
"I think that King Sejong had the 'digital mindset' when he invented hangeul in the 15th century,'' he jokingly said.
In cyberspace, many Internet users purchase various styles of fonts. In Cyworld (the nation's top social networking site) mini-homepages, various typefaces are on sale at 1,000 won a month. There are about 200 kinds of fonts usable on Cyworld mini-homepages.
Choi Eun-joo, a 27-year-old office worker, said that she bought ``Sandol Rainbow Font'' at 1,000 won to use on her mini-homepage.
"I don't like the same fonts all the people uniformly use because they look dull and rigid. I want to have my own typeface,'' said Choi.
"Also, when I leave the same messages on the boards, if I use the pretty fonts that I bought, the messages are more friendly and cute. That's why I bought the fonts to change the mood,'' she said.
Park Mee-hee, another 31-year-old office worker, said that she bought "Gwangsu Font,'' which was used in a popular serial cartoon in a newspaper several years ago.
"I like such fonts because they express my individualistic character in cyberspace,'' Park said.
In this way, hangeul can be the most efficiently mechanized writing system in East Asia.
Hangeul in Fashion & Arts
Since internationally acclaimed Korean fashion designer Lie Sang-bong presented a line of attire that featured hangeul calligraphy of painter Lim Ok-sang in Paris, France last year, hangeul is being on the rise in a fashion arena.
Lie also put the collection of garments and original handwriting for clothes by traditional music singer Jang Sa-ik and painter Lim Ok-sang on display in New York last year.
Lie recently launched a blanket package called "Lie Sang Bong Maison'' decorated with hangeul at E-Mart in Yongsan, Seoul.
But he is not alone. Designer Lee Geon-mann, CEO of the AnF, a fashion brand using hangeul as a major motif, has already made a success story using hangeul in commercial products.
Established in 2000, the company has manufactured various accessories such as purses, neckties, hand bags and even key holders patterned with hangeul.
"Combining hangeul and fashion was very difficult from the beginning. But I felt it would be a great challenge I have to overcome. So I started using hangeul as a fashion motif because I wanted to bring Korean fashion into the heart of fashion in the world,'' Lee said.
The company has two branch stores in Insa-dong, central Seoul. The company is renowned for modernizing the Korean letters as the artistic designs. Mostly, Lee used a motif with consonants and vowels into abstract patterns.
How about expressing hangeul in arts? Typographic designer Ahn Sang-soo and sculptor Gum Nu-ri recently held a joint exhibition of artifacts using hangeul at the Lock Museum in Daehangno, central Seoul.
The two artists drew the public attention with their typography, installations, and sculptures using hangeul. Ahn displayed nine artworks of ``ㅅ'' and eight of ``ㅇ'' and 11 of ``ㅎ'' in the frameworks and a featured hangeul ivy-shaped outdoor installation, hanging vowels like fruits.
Gum made "Nurigeulgil,'' which is a path made up of hangeul-shaped artistic metal pieces.
Ahn is a master and pioneer in developing hangeul typography starting from the early 1980s. As layout designer of the monthly magazine Madang, he created the Madang typeface to overcome the general monotony and rigidity of existing hangeul typefaces.
In 1985, he founded the graphics design firm Ahn Graphics and introduced his namesake typeface.
Also, the Milmul Modern Dance Company, which was founded in 1984, has been performing works that express hangeul using the human body and choreography movement since 1991. The company continues to develop experimental works, which use the dancers' supple bodies to form hanguel letters and to symbolize the principles behind the hangeul writing system as well as its background and history.
Beauty of the Effectiveness of Hangeul
Hangeul is the Korean writing system that King Sejong created in 1444. The alphabet's letters consists of only 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Consonants and vowels are written together in syllabic units, which consist of horizontal, vertical and complex combinations.
Hangeul is known as a user-friendly writing system that allows the expression of not only the vocal sounds but natural sounds as well such as a bird singing or the sound of wind.
"Hangeul is the result of creativity and imagination of King Sejong and his scholars at that time as it is not only functional but also artistic in terms of its basic patterns,'' Yoo said.
Yoo said that hangeul has enormous potentials in terms of the beauty of visual designs. Firstly, its consonants have the three basic patterns ― triangular (ㅅ), square (ㅁ) and round (ㅇ) ― in design patterns.
Consonants are based on the shapes of the mouth during their vocalization or the change in the shape of the organ as the sound was vocalized.
Secondly, for vowels, there are directional patterns such as vertical and horizontal and titled patterns.
Vowels took their shape from heaven, earth, and humanity and were thus related to the three basic letters of " ·'' " ㅡ '' "ㅣ'' "These three basic letters were used to form other vowels based on the philosophical principles related to yin and yang King Sejong kept in mind when he invented the letters,'' Yoo said.
Thirdly, hangeul has a structure based on a combination of letters and the space that each letter occupies in each syllabic block being highly systematic unlike the English alphabet arraying the letters just horizontally.
Yoo said that for that reason, hangeul has received international acclaim as an excellent writing system.
In the mid 1990s, the Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics Department of the University of Oxford, which is renowned for being at the forefront of linguistics research, ranked hangeul first after evaluating 30 writing systems in terms of their rational, scientific and unique characteristics.
In 1997, UNESCO acknowledged the unique value of hangeul by including the hunminjeongeum manuscript on its Memory of the World Register.