Do you know who created Korean Alphabet or, Hangul?
Yes, he is the famous great King Sejong. A scholar who promoted cultural, economic and scientific research. He instituted the Hangul (Korean Alphabet) that people around the world enjoys many other lasting benefits of his rule. The respected fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty reigned from 1418 to 1450 and created a lot of achievements to be cherished by this bronze statue.
To give some exposure on how he contributed to the creation of Hangul, letโs see a tiny bit of his outstanding achievements. Previously, scholars had learned classical Chinese and had relied on the Chinese script for literary purposes, but Koreans did not have an appropriate script for their spoken language. Until the invention of Hangul, they had used clumsy and cumbersome systems that made use of some Chinese characters for their pronunciations and others for their meaning to represent the vernacular language. However, Chinese was a language very different form Korean in its vocal patterns and sentence formation, hence could not represent Korean sound and structure adequately. ย Besides, the complexity of Chinese characters made the writing system too difficult for those other than the privileged few to learn and master it.
Hence King Sejong wanted to provide Koreans with a written means of expression other than the complicated Chinese system. Therefore, he commissioned a group of scholars to devise a phonetic writing system that would correctly represent the sounds of spoken Korean and that could be easily learned by all people that was completed by 1443.
With this history introduction in mind, you can now plan to wander around
the Gyeongbukgung Palace, and have a good opportunity to head up towards the Gwanghamun Square which just located across the Gyeongbukgung Palace. The King Sejong Statue was erected at the centre of this Square. His gentle smile on his face and a book in his hand can be seen all the way from the Gwanghamun Gate. The bronze statue of 9.5m in height celebrates the King and his great achievements.