Behind the rise of Hangul

            Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was created by King Sejong in 1443. Before the creation of Hangul, Korea had used Chinese graphs for transcription. Unlike Chinese graphs, the korean alphabet imitated the shapes of the old seal characters, and was wholly phonetic and capable of transcribing almost any sound. In spite of its practicality and convenience in usage, before it was formally proclaimed in 1446, there was some oppositions from a group of scholar officials like Choe Malli. They believed adoption of  Korean alphabet would make it impossible to identify Korean civilization with that of China which historically had been senior state of Korea. They believed adopting one's own writing system was a unworthy matter that involves barbarians. Although their argument sounds ridiculous in current perspectives, I think such argument must have been quite reasonable one considering the fact that the scholar officials in the dynasty tried to set a sociopolitical order rooted in Confucian moral principles which was transferred from China long time ago. They not only respected China as their senior state, but also tried to emulate the sages of ancient China state. Thus, having Chinese writing system was one of things that distinguished themselves from barbarian and something they were proud of.

            Then, how could king Sejong was able to win such oppositions? I think one of the biggest reasons has to do with the state's effort to propagate Confucian values to people of low social class. From the beginning, Choson tried to propagate Confucian values throughout the state. Not only some law and institution aided the propagation, but also large distribution of Chinese Confucian literatures that were translated in Korean did. A number of people of low social classes were illiterate, and it was the easy and practical Korean alphabet that could make the Confucian literature readable for them. Propagating Confucian value throughout the state was obviously one of the primary goal of the Choson dynasty, and I believe that the opponents like Choe Malli wasn't able to debate over the usefulness of Korean alphabet in the propagation.

Source: textbook