Have you ever heard about Korea? Korea has 5000 years history, and a lot of unique culture. One of them, I will speak about Hangul, Korean language. I think Korean language is as much interest as a topic to show one example of unique Korea culture.

Korean is only language which has as record of origin in the world. It was invited by King-Sejong in 1440. Till then, Korean used Chinese writing system. For that reason, the common people could not write and read. King-Sejong was distressed that the common people had been unable to express their feeling. The Kong's revolutionary idea that everyone should be able to read and write including women was met with resistance from many of his senior officials. And for many years, the literati disdained the writing system, continuing to write in Chinese characters. It was only from 17th century on that literacy in Korea began to increase. Now, Hun-min-jung-eum, the first name of Korean writing system, was assigned to the world heritage of UNESCO.

Worldwide, it is estimated that 781 million adults don't know how to read or write. The American literacy rate is only 79 percent but the Korea illiteracy near the 0 percent. Korean is not easy to learn foreigner, but writing system is different. Korean alphabet is made of phonetic letters just like English. Korean is called 'morning letter' because anyone can learn it in a day. And it has advantage to compare with the other languages. For example, each Chinese character has a meaning, so people have to memory all of them, and Japanese letters imitate Chinese characters, they can not be used without Chinese character. Korean can generate more than 10,000 sounds using 24 alphabets however, Japanese generate about 300 sounds using 71 alphabets and Chinese generate about 40 sounds using 50,000 characters. Moreover Korean is seven times faster computer operating ability than Chinese or Japanese.

The 21st century will be the age of information. National competitive power depends on the quantity and quality of information. And language of the future has a strong value. Therefore, we must have conceit about Hangul and are grand for 21st century. It is time to invest money and to make an effort to develop Hangul for the 21st century like the French government has done.