A brief intoduction to hanja (한자)

It begins.

한자 (Hanja) is like the boogeyman for learning Korean. Hanja is endlessly referenced and is this never-ending source of conversation enders. Want to win an argument about the Korean language? Throw the word "Hanja" in. Bam. pie hole shut. But Hanja shouldn't be this awful beast of an obstacle to learning Korean. I personally grew tired of hearing about it and not knowing why it was important or why people even cared. It really shouldn't be feared.

While certainly not necessary to learn basic and intermediate Korean, Hanja does make life a lot easier. Honestly even a survival knowledge of Hanja makes Korean a lot more manageable. Like all skills in life, there are varying degrees of mastery and the more you learn, the more useful it becomes. Think of it as a car owner's knowledge of auto repair. Necessary? Not at all but if you know even the basics like how to jumpstart a dead battery or change a tire it does tend to make things not as scary.

So let's start out with some history. First and foremost, Hanja is not Chinese (the language). If you hear anyone, including a well meaning native Korean speaker, who refers to Hanja as Chinese, please slap them gently across the face for me. Mandarin is not Hanja. Hanja is not Cantonese. It never was. It never will be. 한자 are individual characters that, when combined into a sentence, form 한문, or Traditional (Classical) Chinese writing. The differences are subtle but clearly exist. From a Korean linguist via email: 한문 consists of 한자. 한문 refers to full sentences whereas 한자 means Chinese letters. Sometimes both terms are used interchangeably to call Chinese characters in general. Simply put, Hanja is a written language that should probably be dead but isn't. 한자 slash 한문 formed the partial basis for many languages including Japanese and Mandarin. Although it is true that knowing Hanja will help one learn these other languages quicker, knowing Hanja is not the same as knowing Chinese or Japanese. It's like the similarities in Romanantic languages; knowing Spanish of course makes learning English or French easier. However, French speakers cannot effectively communicate with Spanish speakers just because they both have Latin-based languages.

Linguistically, it all starts with China. Traditional Chinese script has existed in various forms for thousands of years. However, like all languages, it evolved and underwent reform countless times. One such time occurred around the 1940s with a government-sponsored initiative to add a simplified Chinese script in an effort to increase literacy. This was not designed to replace the traditional script, which other countries had been using for the basis for their own languages. Korean was one such language that maintained the old script. Japanese, in comparison, currently uses hiragana, katakana and kanji (revised Hanja). Since the mid 1940s, Japan has used simplified versions of Traditional Chinese letters and therefore currently don't fully resemble their old forms found in the copy of a original known as Hanja. That is to say, Traditional Chinese, Korean Hanja and Japanese Kyujitai developed relatively independent of each other.

Although Korean has expanded from its original dependency on the 천자문 (Thousand Character Classic), Hanja was still the literary script of choice in Korea for centuries despite the creation of the native script 한글 (Hangul) in the 1440s. Koreans now proudly celebrate Hangul as a gift to the world from the great King Sejong, but it might surprise you to find out that it was not exactly well received back then. The literati were understandably upset when a script that was easy enough to learn in a day emerged as a possible contender to the traditional Chinese script that took them decades to master. Certainly such an uncivilized script could only be used by the lower classes; a poor man's Chinese. Some of Hangul's early nicknames include 암글 (women's script) and 아침글 (the script you can learn within a morning). Hangul did not begin to resemble the nationalistic script of choice that it is today until 1894. Two years later, Hangul was used to publish pro-Korean, anti-Chinese sentiments in The Independent (독립신문). The adoption of Hangul increasingly became related with the spread of anti-Japanese nationalism as well as Korean Catholicism. All that from something that'll take you less than a day to get used to.

As Traditional Chinese took a different linguistic direction, Korea faithfully adhered to their own development of the Korean language with the phonetic preservation of old Hanja as well as the more recent additions of foreign words (외래어) from languages such as English and Japanese. Although currently Hangul is the obvious script of choice to decipher and distribute Hanja-based documents and texts (as well as express original words and thoughts) several other Korean writing systems preceded Hangul including 이두 (Idu), 향찰 (Hyangchal), and 구결 (Gugyeol). Each had their varying levels of usage though all have pretty much been cast to the wayside. Hangul is simply much easier to use.

The upside to Hangul phonetization is you don't have to write in Hanja. No stroke counting, no big calligraphy pen, to questionable looking pictograph, nothing. Just a phonetic spelling of the word. This would be like spelling "hallepehnyo" for the Spanish word "jalapeño". Obvious downfalls to Hangul phonetization include a dangerous amount of homonyms. For example, "성" could mean anything from castle (城), gender (性) to last name (姓). Thankfully, as Hanja is still used sparingly in modern newspapers and moderately in some formal documents, it thus maintains a modest-sized Hanja-literate population. When a word in Hangul needs to be clarified, the original Hanja is used for clarification. This brings up the issue of who learns real Hanja and when.

Native speakers of Korean are ideally fluent (if not just pleasantly exposed) to 1800 different Hanja throughout public school. However, seeing as how Hanja is left out of the dreaded 수능, I imagine the pressure to learn Hanja diligently is quite low. I also imagine the actual number of instantly recognizable characters is actually quite a lot smaller; probably closer to a few hundred if I were to pull a number out of nowhere. It's much more likely that the native speaker of Korean knows the Korean spelling and definition of most major Hanja characters but does not know the proper Hanja spelling. I would also presume that many high frequency words that have both a Korean and Hanja base are also well known such as 대 (大), 중 (中), 수 (水), 인 (人), etc.

So why do there exist foreign history buffs who possess a higher understanding of Hanmoon when compared to an average native speaker? What's the point? Two reasons. First, old books (고서) and documents are likely to be written in Chinese, Japanese or Hanja depending the source and time period. Hangul is really not going to do you much good unless it has already be translated into Korean. Second, modern Korean is evolving away from its old roots and adopting an increasing amount of native and loan words. An estimated breakdown of Korean vocabulary in modern use is about 35% native Korean words (e.g. 길, 가죽), 60% Sino-Korean words (e.g. 신문, 약속) and about 5% loan words (e.g. 아르바이트, 택시). Therefore, knowing Hanja is clearly not a necessity but certainly gives one a leg up.

Advantages to knowing Hanja roots? Learning new Korean vocabulary is much easier. It's safe to say that knowing a hundred or so common Hanja roots will make picking up Korean a lot quicker. Disadvantages? Hanja is not always the socially acceptable word. It's not as if Hanja words are inherently dirty it's just that some words might be more easily understood in native Korean. Saying 오른 쪽 for "turn right" will probably be a bit more clear than saying "우회전". Unfortunately, due to the increasing influence of bad Konglish, the more common word instead might be actually be a Konglish word instead. Boo on that.

I leave you with this attempt at a summary in order to inspire those who have put off learning Hanja. Sure it's a little embarrassing to start relearning to write numbers again (just when you finally felt comfortable with the two sets of numbers in Korean) but a little goes a long way. If you're interested in learning Hanja, I'd recommend Useful Chinese Characters for Learners of Korean or the entry over at the Korean Wiki Project. Also, check out this creative Hanja advertising ploy.

Brief interview with a Korean public school history teacher

A rather off topic post today. Due to my obligations to SMOE (Seoul Ministry of Education) I have to attend certain meetings and seminars. At one of these seminars, an English-speaking Korean high school history teacher delivered a brief lecture on Korean history and why we should care. I think for the most part, my fellow colleagues couldn’t care less about ancient history but are curious about a few modern historical topics. I say this because my colleagues asked questions liked “Why do Koreans hate Japanese?” and “What is all the fuss about Dokdo? Who gives a..” and so on. He was happy to answer.

The lecturer’s name is 임태현 and he was gracious enough to answer a few questions via after the seminar a few months ago. I asked him some rather random questions but he was surprisingly happy to answer them. I have edited out some of the really off-topic questions and modified the speech a little so as to give context. Also, although his English is quite fluent, I have also taken the liberty to correct a few mistakes. I post this with his permission and hope that it answers a few random questions some may have. Enjoy.

Q: How does a person become a public history teacher in Korea? What are the requirements? Is it competitive?

First of all, there are two types of teachers in Korea. Elementary school teachers and Secondary school teachers. Since you are asking about a Korean history teacher, it falls under the category of “Secondary school teachers” because elementary school teachers have to teach all kinds of subjects.

One who wants to be a Korean history teacher must obviously first get a teacher's license. For Koreans, it is needed to enter the College of Education for secondary schools or if he or she majored in history, they can take a teacher's training course or even dual major. Once they obtain the license, they can be a teacher legally. But in Korea, there are more people who are qualified to teach history than are actually needed in the schools. So, the government made a sort of qualifying exam once a year and it is really competitive.

Plus, there are two types of school systems: Public schools and Private schools. The government picks Public school teachers by the qualifying exam, but the private schools invite teachers using their own recruiting system. Their recruitment test may include a test of major knowledge, teaching skills, experiences, etc. What is more important is that recently the government permits some specially selected private schools to invite some competent teachers even if they don’t have a teacher’s license. In this way, even a foreigner could be a Korean history teacher.

Q: How can I learn 한자 (Chinese characters) effectively? Do I need it?

Chinese characters are really difficult to remember and use even for most Koreans because we express most of our feelings in Hangul. But Korean history researchers must be trained to read and interpret Chinese words in historical texts. So once prospective history teachers enter university, they keep reading and memorizing Chinese characters to learn and interpret Chinese sentences. I am not fluent but I am trying improve. I was surprised that you can speak fluent Korean, therefore I think you can easily learn how to read and interpret Chinese characters. I think there might be books on Chinese characters at most bookstores. Considering that you have to interpret Korean to English, just look around and see if there are Hanja-English books available. In the library of my school there are some good Hanja-learning books, so it shouldn’t be too hard for you to find some.

Q: Could you recommend any Korean historical movies?

I don’t really watch them often, but I can certainly tell you what are some popular ones. Of course the most famous one would have to be “태극기 휘날리며” (Taegugki) which is about 한국전쟁 (Korean War). Two movies set in 조선시대 (Joseon dynasty) are “왕의 남자” (The King and the Clown) and “신기전” (The Divine Weapon). For the 삼국시대 (Korean three kingdoms period) there is “황산벌” (Hwangsanbul). Finally, for the contemporary history, there is “화려한 휴가” (May 18th) which deals with “광주 민주화 운동” (Gwangju Democratic Movement - previously known as the Kwangju Uprising).

Q: Why do public school teachers move to a different every five years? Do they have to go? Why can’t they stay?

Like you ask, it’s only for the public school teachers. Private school teachers stay there until they retire or choose to leave. For the public school teachers, they belong to the government; more specifically, to SOME. The city or local province hires teachers and the city or local province belongs to the government, so teachers have their right to apply for the school they would like to be relocated to. From that point, there exists a sort of preferred school list in terms of traffic, residence, etc. That becomes the reason why the city has to take some measures for teachers to rotate. Otherwise, theoretically, so one would want to teach outside of the downtown area. It’s a system to help make things fair. Nowadays, the 강남 (Gangnam) area is on the top of the wish list.