훈민정음 · Hunminjeongeum
The People's Proper Sounds
In the fifteenth century, King Sejong the Great observed that the common people of Joseon could not record their words in the ill-fitting Chinese characters of the literati. And so, in 1443, he convened the Hall of Worthies and designed an entirely new alphabet — a script fashioned after the shape of the mouth itself.
Each consonant traces the position of tongue against palate, lip against lip, breath against throat. Each vowel encodes the Neo-Confucian cosmology of heaven (·), earth (ㅡ), and the standing human (ㅣ).
"A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."
— Hunminjeongeum Haerye, 1446