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Hangul history

The hangul alphabet was created in 1443 by a group of scholars on the orders and under the control of van Sejong the Great (ruled 1418—1450). Earlier in Korea, Chinese characters were used, which were complicated and did not reflect well the sounds of the Korean language. The vast majority of the population was illiterate. It was these reasons that pushed van Sejong to create Hangul. The alphabet almost completely replaced the Chinese characters, hancha. Hangul was created to represent both Korean and Chinese words, but the letters for recording Chinese sounds have become obsolete and have been removed from the alphabet. The modern name «Hangul» was introduced by Chu Sigyong in 1912. It means «great alphabet» in old Korean and «Korean alphabet" in modern Korean language.