Chinese character education in Korea

When I first came to Korea in 1965, Chinese characters, called "hanja" in Korean, could be seen everywhere — road signs, names on buildings, advertisements and even in newspapers. However, hanja has all but vanished. Newspapers no longer have headlines in Chinese characters, we see very few on signs around town — maybe at a Chinese restaurant?

And in the field of education, the list of 900 characters mandatory for middle school students to learn and 1800 for high school students hasn’t been seen for a while.

But a group testifying to the National Assembly for a committee on education is hoping that it will change. They will be calling for a revival of Chinese character education in Korea. Their argument is that knowing the Chinese characters that underpin 60 percent of Korean vocabulary will help students become more literate, articulate and knowledgeable about the language they speak and write.

I will be one of those testifying at the committee meeting. I have produced a couple of videos on my YouTube channel about the added value of Chinese character knowledge in learning and using the Korean language, which led to my involvement.

When I published a book in 1999, the cover included glorious, erudite Chinese characters. A year later, when I visited the publishing house to see how well the book was selling, they said, “Oh, by the way, you might be interested in knowing that your book was the last we published here with Chinese on the cover." Recently republished as an e-book, indeed, the cover now features glorious, erudite Hangeul.

I believe Chinese character knowledge helps people learn and use Korean well. If we look at Hong Gildong, the legendary, fictional Robin Hood figure of Korean literature, he is described as a fast learner, who if you taught him one thing, he understood 10.

It sounds like literary hyperbole, right? But there is more to it than that. It turns out that when you teach one Chinese character, students can learn 10 or more words associated with that one character.

What is the very first Korean phrase we learn? "Annyeonghasimnikka?" means "how are you?"— or more literally, “are you at peace?” Here, the character "an" signifies "peace." It appears in a wide array of vocabulary terms, such as "pyeonan" (comfort), "anjeon" (safety), "anjeong" (stability), "buan" (anxiety) and "boan" (security). That makes 10examples already. But it appears in even more terms beyond these, such as "munan" (greetings), "wian" (consolation) and a particular favorite among professors, "ansiknyeon" (a sabbatical year). Furthermore, the character appears in numerous place names, including Andong, Anyang, Cheonan, Muan, Buan and Ansan. In essence, by teaching just a single character, one enables the learning of a hundred different things.

Teach one and learn 10. Teach one and learn 100. It is not hyperbole — it is vocabulary building and etymology. To an English speaker, it is equivalent of knowing the Latin or Greek underpinnings in our medical, legal and other technical specialties.

I had a growth removed from my back several years ago. The doctor sent it to the lab to be sure it wasn’t cancerous, and he called me a few days later to report, “It was only necrotic tissue.” I paid him $200 for him to speak Latin to me.

Will the educational world in Korea change? Will they go back to teaching Chinese characters? There is opposition, which up to this point is winning. They have argued that pure Korean, written in Hangeul without Chinese, is better and easier. They have won the game up to this point: Chinese characters have disappeared from newspapers, the streets, the classroom and in almost every way possible. The Hangeul team has won. But the hanja team is organizing for a rematch.

Will the “pro-hanja” team win this time? No — they don’t stand a chance. But they might win some concessions and get more hanja into the curriculum as a requirement. More likely they will get enhanced elective courses for students, as hanja education is in the elective area now, as I understand it.

I don’t know the Korean educational field very well. I will be speaking about hanja education for teaching Korean to non-Koreans in America. I am one of the few to emphasize hanja in America. My colleagues at the American Association of Teachers of Korean are almost all pro-Hangeul.

Wish me luck in my testifying to the National Assembly, but I am under no illusions: We will lose.

Mark Peterson (frogoutsidethewell@gmail.com) is a professor emeritus of Korean studies at Brigham Young University in Utah. The views expressed here are his own.