Hangul Day
October 9 · Level 5 · #1268 of 2238
Hangul Day in South Korea commemorates the proclamation of the Korean alphabet, created under King Sejong in the fifteenth century. The new script aimed to make literacy more accessible to people who struggled to learn the Chinese characters then used for writing.
How it is celebrated: official ceremonies, exhibitions, lectures and calligraphy competitions explore the alphabet's history. Museums and cultural institutions offer activities centred on Korean writing.
The basic consonant letters were designed to represent the positions of speech organs when making their sounds, giving the alphabet an unusually direct connection to pronunciation.