Hanja are Chinese characters used in the Korean language with unique Korean pronunciations. They were necessary for reading and writing Korean until the 19th century when the phonetic Korean alphabet system, hangul, was created. Hanja were banned and reintroduced in South Korea during the 20th century, and are still taught to graduate students and historians. Hangul is now the official written language of both North and South Korea.
Hanja are Chinese characters borrowed and incorporated into the Korean language and with uniquely Korean pronunciations. Unlike the Japanese equivalent, called kanji, most hanja have not been simplified and remain identical to traditional Chinese characters. Until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the fluency of this writing system was required to read and write Korean. This Chinese character-based writing system then gave way to a phonetic Korean alphabet system called hangul which was created in the 19th but not widely implemented for centuries.
The Korean writing system was once based on Chinese characters. The use of these characters is believed to have been made necessary by the introduction of Buddhism. The 6th-century Chinese poem A Thousand Classic Characters, a manual for teaching Chinese characters, also gained popularity in Korea and influenced the development of hanja. By 1583, the poem was also being used as a primer for writing. Since Korea did not have its own writing system until 1440, Chinese characters were used instead.
Properly literate Koreans therefore had to master the hanja. Each character is formed using one of 214 radicals, plus additional sound-indicating elements, although some are pictographic. The meaning of these borrowed Chinese characters has generally remained the same in China, Japan, and Korea, although the pronunciation of each character has become uniquely Korean over time.
In the 1440s, King Sejong the Great and his scholars developed a Korean phonetic script now known as hangul that competed with logographic hanja. The promotion of Hangul was spurred by the fact that Chinese characters were difficult for most people to master, resulting in a large part of the population being illiterate. Hangul was meant to be easier to learn and became a part of popular culture despite opposition from the literary elite. It did not completely supplant hanja until the 20th century.
Hangul is the official written language of both North and South Korea, having been used in official documents since 1894. However, the old system never completely disappeared. Hanjas were banned in North Korea by Kim Il Sung but reintroduced in 1964 for reasons that are not entirely clear. North Korean elementary and high school students learn about 2,000 characters.
South Korea alternately banned and reintroduced these Chinese characters during the 20th century. A final ban was issued in 1955, but the old system returned in 1964, with more than 1964 hanja in school textbooks. All school textbooks were written in Hangul by 1,300, but middle and high school students continue to be taught hanja as a separate course circa 1970. Korean language graduate students and study programs are usually required to master these basic Chinese characters.
Fluency remains necessary for historians and other scholars studying Korean historical records or literature prior to the introduction of Hangul. Children are taught some of the older writing system in school, but there are few opportunities to practice reading these characters in daily life. Hangul is now used for native Korean words and even most native Chinese words. Most hanja continue to appear primarily in personal names and some university textbooks, often with the hangul equivalent.
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