Free English Language Dissertations - The Simplicity And Scientific Applicability Of Hangul Has Ever Since Been
The simplicity and scientific applicability of hangul has ever since been recognized by national and international language-planners alike as a model of precision and accuracy. Thus the work of the Korean language-planners enormously improved communication horizontally, across geography, and vertically, down time, for the Korean people. Eventually literacy would improve, knowledge of national history and philosophy broaden and deepen, and a stronger sense of national identity would be forged through the strengthening of the Korean language.
In the twentieth-century Korean language-planners continued the communicative achievements gained from this precedent. Even though the invention of hangul had vastly clarified communication in Korean, the language still depended heavily upon Chinese script, and the history of twentieth-century Korean policy was to try to reverse this. Following political separation different policies were pursued in both North Korea and South Korea.
In 1948 South Korea abolished the use of Chinese characters in the Korean script though this abolition today remains incomplete: many newspapers, for instance, still use Chinese symbols. Nevertheless, the language-planners have made much progress. Novels, schoolbooks, official papers as well as academic works are written in hangul. This success is evidenced by the declining percentage of Chinese symbols found in the major Korean newspapers, which is now at only 10-20% compared with 95% in 1900. The South Korean language-planners believe that this reduction of alien Chinese characters purifies and therefore makes more precise and clear communication amongst Koreans. This hewing of Chinese from Korean has however met some opposition amongst Korean language-planners: most of whom contend that China’s imminent economic and military world-supremacy makes it sensible for Korea to align itself with China. Phrases such as segyehwa (globalization) and kukchehwa (internationalization) are used in this context, and there are growing calls for the reintroduction of teaching of Chinese characters for young children these being scrapped by Pak Chung Hi in 1970. From a linguistic point too, campaigners for the inclusion of the Chinese symbols argue that they are a gateway to the rich literature and philosophy of China.
The history of North Korean language-planning in the past sixty years is an example of how language can be manipulated to preserve and embalm the doctrines and ideologies of a particular state. When this happens, the function of language reverses so that the quality of communication is reduced. Seeking to distance themselves from South Korea, the north proclaimed the dialect of pyongyang to be the official language of Korea.
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