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Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Erin Menke. Listener discretion advised Jun Hyung Pil had to move quickly, but without bringing too much attention to himself or his mission. He had 10,000 won on him, which was enough money to buy several beautiful homes. But that money was for something far more valuable than a city block of mansions, something far more precious than he could let on. Jun headed south from Seoul toward the city of Andong with his cash in tow and his mind set on purchasing one of the most important documents in Korean history. The year was 1940, and Korea was in its 30th year under official Japanese imperial control. As is fashionable for imperial rulers to do, the Japanese government had made it a policy to suppress the Korean people and Korean culture, going so far as to outlaw Korean names. The government had also been chipping away at Korean heritage and history through a variety of programs, including taking national artifacts from the Korean peninsula to mainland Japan. If the government knew about the existence of John's desired possession, they would surely seize it and whisk it away, perhaps even destroy it. As a collector of Korean antiques and artifacts and an ardent believer in the beauty of Korean art and history, Jun could not let Japan's colonial regime steal an item so essential to Korean heritage. So as he traveled out of Seoul, Jun tried to contain his excitement and his anxiety. Once in Endong, Jun headed for the antique dealer store. The 10,000 won he carried felt heavier and heavier the closer he got, and Jun couldn't help but look over his shoulder every time he turned a corner. The anticipation was gnawing at him. Was the document actually real? Could someone have beaten him to it? What if he was too late? His thoughts went silent as he stepped into the shop before the door could even close behind him. June made eye contact with the shopkeeper and introduced himself. The antique dealer disappeared into a back room and returned moments later holding a book. He flipped open the pages of the book and explained it was an heirloom of the House of Kim there in Andong, but John already knew that. He also knew that they had only been asking 1000 won for the book, but John had sent a telegram ahead promising 10,000 if they held it for him. After admiring the book for a few moments, Jun handed the man the money and watched as the shopkeeper carefully wrapped the book up for him. Now that the document was his, he wouldn't let it out of his sight. He would protect it with his life. As he headed back to Seoul, Jun couldn't believe what he was now holding. What was now his. This piece of Korean heritage was worth forever, far more than the 10,000 won he had shelled out for it. He now owned the only known copy of the Huminjungam Hera, first published in 1446. The text that explains King Sejong's greatest invention, a new Alphabet. The spoken language of our country is different from that of China and does not suit the Chinese characters. Therefore, amongst uneducated people, there have been many who, having something they wish to put into words, have been unable to express their feelings in writing. I am greatly distressed because of this, and so I have made 28 new letters, let everyone practice them at their ease and adapt them to their daily use. End quote While his creation was underappreciated at the time, King Sejung's new Alphabet, now called Hengul, was a revolutionary way to codify human language. Never before had humans invented a script for which the exact reasoning behind each aspect of it could be articulated. Modern scholars, but especially modern linguists, recognize King Sejong's Alphabet to be one of humanity's greatest achievements. With his purchase of the Humanjing Om Haerae, Jung Hyungpil saved an artifact not only crucial to Korean history, but also to our understanding of one of humanity's most ingenious creations. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is Noble Blood. Only one monarch in Korean history bears the moniker the Great Sejong the Great Fourth Monarch of the Joseon Dynasty. He ruled over Korea for 32 years from 1418 to 1450, and is still heralded as a ruler who put the well being of his subjects before all else. For our American listeners, his status in Korean society can be compared to George Washington's. He is a foundational figure in Korea's collective conscious. Sejong inherited the throne at a crucial point in the Joseon Dynasty's history. The Joseon Dynasty, which controlled modern day north and South Korea, had toppled the previous dynasty just 30 years earlier, which in dynasty times is pretty much nothing. And most of the turmoil that came with the dissolution of one dynasty and the rise of another had by this point pretty much subsided. So now Sejong needed to establish the identity of the Joseon Dynasty and weave it together with that of Koreas. Fortunately, Sejong was up to the task. Despite being young when he first rose to power. He was an incredibly wise ruler. His mentality is summed up well by this quote attributed to him, which is, if the people prosper, how can the King not prosper with them? And if the people do not prosper, how may the King prosper without them? That quote captures exactly how Sejong's commitment to his subjects well being drove both his politics and his personal actions. We have the incredibly detailed and organized Silok, or Annals of the Joseon Dynasty. Thank for such specific quotes from King Sejong, as well as for detailed descriptions of his life. While we should take the writings in those annals with a grain of salt, given that they were written for the express purpose of recording for posterity the King's greatness, they are useful sources in that they demonstrate which traits and accomplishments King Sejong valued and therefore wanted to be portrayed as being and having done. I will say King Sejong did have a lot of accomplishments to be proud of. He was a thoughtful politician, careful not to over tax his subjects and compassionate in his policies. He also strengthened the country's army with innovative and improved weaponry. But that's not all. Sejong was also accomplished outside the areas typically within a monarch's purview. He had a deep regard for wisdom, and he formed a royal academy known as the hall of Worthies, where scholars would provide lectures for him and participate in debates with him. Those scholars could write books, conduct research, and they would invent any number of things that would better the lives of everyday Koreans. Some of those inventions include the world's first standardized rain gauge, an updated calendar system, and a new type of printing press. Scholars in the hall of Worthies also published treatises on farming, specifically in Korea, as well as on traditional Korean medicinal knowledge. While scholars in the hall of Worthies ultimately created many of the achievements attributed to Sejong's reign, we can't ignore that it was Sejong's patronage that fostered their creativity. Artists were also beneficiaries of Se Jeong's support, as his patronage resulted in the publication of many books, the creation of hundreds of new musical compositions, and the invention of a new musical instrument. But one of his contributions stands head and shoulders above the rest. Of all of King Sejong's inventions and contributions, there's one that's the most the invention of an entirely new writing system. Hangul is a script whose modern version contains 24 basic 14 consonants and 10 vowels. The script is both alphabetic, since specific symbols symbolize certain sounds, and syllabic, because symbols can get combined to create a syllabic unit, traditionally Hengul was written like other Asian scripts, top to bottom, right to left. But nowadays, Hangul is typically written left to right. You might be asking yourself, dana, why do I care that King Se Jun created a new script in the 1500s out of everything he did? It seems pretty cool, but otherwise not particularly life changing. And you'd be right that perhaps creating a new writing system isn't the most consequential thing a monarch can do. But King Sejung and his hall of Worthies accomplished something never done before. Inventing a script for which the theory and motives for it are fully articulated. Okay, if you're not a linguistics nerd, let me walk out. Why this is so cool. So, almost all other alphabets and scripts that humans have used have evolved over thousands of years, with no overarching theoretical guidelines dictating its structure. Hangul is the first Alphabet of its kind. There's a systemic reasoning behind each facet of the script, and we know all of those reasons. Furthermore, the theory behind the script is pretty impressive. The symbols represent the shape that human speech organs like the tongue and throat make when various sounds are made. So technically, if one knows what sound every symbol represents, one could write many different languages using Hangul. Most linguists and scholars agree that Hangul is an immensely creative achievement that should be counted among humankind's greatest creations, which is some pretty high praise. I should note that the more commonly used name for this script and the name I'll be using, Hangul, was actually coined in 1912 by Korean linguist Joo Sejong. Hangul's original name was Humin Jeongam, which translates to correct sounds for the instruction of the people. If you recall, the document that Jong Hyungpil traveled across Korea to buy in the introduction to this episode was called the Humin Jeong Harae, which translates to explanations and examples of the proper sounds for the instruction of the people. The translation of Hangul's original name illuminates King Sejong's motivation behind his invention. I mean, most monarchs dedicated their free time to leading hunting expeditions or luxuriating with their mistresses, not personally having a hand in creating a new writing system unlike anything seen before in human history. But King Sejeon's motivation as a king was to better the lives of his subjects, and he believed that a writing system custom designed for the Korean language would be a crucial tool for achieving betterment through education. At the time he lived, the vast majority of published material in Korea was written in Chinese. If we're being more specific, Koreans were reading classical Chinese texts and writing new text in The Chinese language or in Hanga, a Chinese script retrofitted to represent the Korean language. So in order to be literate, one had to memorize thousands of Chinese characters. It should be no surprise, then, that literacy was a difficult skill to achieve and a skill reserved for the elites in Korea. King Sejong hoped to bring literacy to the masses with a writing system that had a smaller number of symbols, therefore infinitely easier to learn and made specifically for the Korean language. So in 1443, Hangul was officially announced, and the books detailing the logic behind the script and how to read and write it were published a few years later in 1446, aka the book that Jang Hyungpil bought. Interestingly, we aren't entirely certain who specifically invented Hangul, because there is no record of the project before it was announced as completed. Was it Se Jung all by himself? Or did one or more of the scholars in the hall of Worthies invent it at his behest? Or maybe it was a collaboration. Most scholars believe that Sejong and his scholars collaborated on the language, but that the king did indeed play a large personal role in creating the script. In fact, records indicate that Sejong pushed through neuralgia, diabetes, and worsening eyesight in order to work on the language, even after it was announced, going so far as to bring his linguistic books with him on a trip to hot springs when he was trying to recover his health. As you might be able to guess, Korean elites were not thrilled with the king's new invention. The creation of a new script disrupted centuries of custom that privileged the Chinese language over Korean, which they knew. On top of that, they weren't thrilled with the idea that the general population could now have access to the politically powerful tools of reading and writing. Such a change threatened their status. Now, elites couldn't just come out and say that they felt threatened by the language, so instead they crafted other arguments against the new script. Famously, Choy Manley, an associate professor in the hall of Worthies, expressed this critique. Since the new Alphabet is so easily understood, I fear that the people will fall into laziness and never make efforts to learn. Those who do not use Chinese characters but other letters and alphabets are all barbarians without exception. To use new letters would surely make us barbarians ourselves. Why does your Highness seek to alter a language that has been used since early antiquity and has no ill effects, and place alongside it a set of coarse and vulgar characters of no worth at all? In other words, if reading and writing is easy, that'll make us lazy barbarians. But King Sejong was not deterred by his critics beyond believing in his mission, he was not about to abandon a project he dedicated years to. And so the king stuck to his guns and began publishing all of his royal edicts in both Chinese hanga and in Hangul. He commissioned classical works of literature transcribed into Hangul, and made Hangul a required portion of the state exam for the remainder of his reign. Sejung went out of his way to promote Hangul in the hopes that his fellow nobles would come to see the beauty and benefits of his greatest creation. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, when King Sejong passed away in 1450, so too died the push to use Hangul. The script fell into disuse by the elite, who gave the language nicknames that translate to the vulgar script, the woman's script, and the children's script. Eventually, things went beyond just social ostracism when in 1504, an anonymous writer published criticisms of the then king in Hangul. The king was so furious with this publication that he outlawed the script. So for the four centuries after Hangul was created, the nobility in Korea relegated the language to the dusty storage room of history. But listener fear not. King Sejung's magnificent creation was not lost to society entirely. And we can thank religious minorities, women, and my favorite people, writers and artists for that. Like I just mentioned, one of the supposedly derogatory nicknames for Hangul used to be the Women script. Looking past the fact that being associated with women was supposedly a bad thing, this nickname actually reveals that women were substantial in keeping Hangul in use. Further, it appears that women across social classes used Hangul. From records referencing intercept personal notes, we know that women in the royal family used Hangul for their everyday writing. So too did women in lower classes who were less likely to receive an education in the complicated Chinese characters. Additionally, Korean Buddhists were some of the first advocates of Hangul after King Sejong, and they played a large role in the preservation of Hangul from King Sejong's time onward. Although the official policy of the Joseon dynasty was to promote Confucianism and repress Buddhism, Buddhism still managed to maintain a significant foothold amongst the general population. When translating and printing scripture meant to serve the common people, Buddhist monks used Hangul. Thus, in their efforts to bring people to Buddhism, these monks preserved and taught Hangul throughout Korea. European missionaries also relied on Hangul to teach the Bible and teach Christian practices, ultimately spreading Hangul in the same way Buddhist monks did. While those with religious motivation saw the usefulness of Hangul, they weren't alone. Starting in the late 16th century, there was a renaissance of literature and poetry in Korea, and many of those forms utilized Hangul, Ghasa, and Sijo forms of poetry in particular used the language. A continuation of that renaissance, Hangul novels came into popularity in the 17th century. Korean readers were looking for stories similar to those from Chinese novels of the time that told love stories and adventures. Some of those first novels were just translations of Chinese stories into Hangul. But soon a flourishing industry of original Hangul novels developed. Hangul novels, specifically meant for a female audience, were also quite popular and further helped disseminate the language to populations even less likely to be literate. While books and religious texts are some of the easiest artifacts demonstrating Hangul's usage, there were other, less remarkable ways that people preserved and used Hangul. The script was popular amongst the urban middle class of bureaucrats and administrators for records and bookkeepings. All of these groups poets, Buddhists, women, Christians, the middle class, bureaucrats, and more kept Hangul alive and in use for centuries after Sejong's passing in the 19th century. As nationalism in Korea rose, so too did people's usage of hangul. Finally, in 1849, the script was adopted as the national writing system of Korea, and it was used for the first time in the modern era for official government documents. There was a period under Japanese colonial rule when Hangul was outlawed, but since Korea's liberation in 1945, Hangul has been the official writing system of Korea, now North Korea and South Korea, respectively. In South Korea specifically, the country's literacy rate at the end of World War II was roughly 22%. Now the country has a literacy rate of 97.9%. Now, I'm not attempting to attribute that growth to just Hangul becoming the official writing system by any means. I only mention it because all I can think is that King Sejong would be so proud to know just how many people use his creation every day, just like he wanted. Anyone who having something they wish to put into words is now able to express their feelings in writing. Keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about the current court case going on in South Korea over the second known copy of the Hoominjung Harae and the fire which threatened its very existence. Vacation season is nearly upon us. Basically, anytime I ever have off from work. 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