A daily life that resembles the heavens 空に似た日常

[Summary] Hangeul is the world’s only script for which the creator (King Sejong the Great), the date of creation (1443), and the principle of creation are all recorded — a scientific, original script modeled on the human speech organs. King Sejong created it out of pure love for the people, braving the fierce opposition of his officials, and its excellence has been attested by many foreign scholars and institutions such as Hulbert and McCawley. Hangeul (and Korean) carries words difficult to translate into other languages — jeong (情), han (恨), samuchida (to pierce to the bone), nunchi (reading the mood), aigo, and so on. Thanks to its particles, word order is free, and it is a relationship-centered language that puts ‘we’ before ‘I.’ Hangeul can transcribe every sound, holds the deep character of loyalty-filial piety-fidelity (chung-hyo-yeol), and is optimized for the digital age. As True Parents said, when K-truth advances as one with the K-wave (Hallyu) and K-Hangeul, Hangeul will become the common language of the age of one human family. When the age of AGI comes, the scientific truthfulness of the Unification Principle will be proven, and Korean will become an essential language for the people of the world to understand the deep truth of Heaven. Thus the completion of the Great Epic of the Korean People as a Chosen People draws near.

[Quotation from the Exposition of the Divine Principle — the cause of the confusion of language and the necessity of its unification] There could be no greater misfortune than this: that we, the same descendants of one parent, holding the same emotions of joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure, should be unable to communicate because the languages that express them differ. Therefore, for a great-family ideal world to be realized in which we attend the returning Lord as our parent, the languages must without fail be unified… If it is true that Jesus, the parent of humankind, returns to Korea, he will surely use the Korean language, and so Korean will become the mother tongue of the fatherland. Accordingly, all peoples cannot but use this fatherland-language. Thus all humankind will become one people using one nation’s language, forming one nation. (It is striking that the last section of the Exposition of the Divine Principle, written after the war, emphasized the unification of language centered on Hangeul. At the time it seemed an impossible hope.)

[Words of True Parents — August 1, 1994] From now on you must learn Korean. Language is the problem. Even to make a single video, you have to translate it into many languages. How inconvenient and complicated is that? However hard it is, the language problem must be solved. Then who will unify this language? It cannot be done by education. It must be done by the power of religion. Then what kind of religion? There must be a religion that can teach all the fundamental things, that teaches the content one must not fail to learn. That religion is precisely the religion of the True Parents. And what is the language of the True Parents? It is the language used eternally in the spirit world. It becomes the root language of our eternal homeland. Something like English is a horizontal language: father is ‘you,’ mother is ‘you,’ everyone is ‘you.’ Can that be called a proper language? Linguistically, Korean is truly remarkable.

---

*Introduction — A People with the Most Special Script in the World

It is said there are some 7,000 languages in the world. But only a very few countries have their own script to write those languages. At present about 70% of the world’s people use the Roman alphabet. Vietnam borrowed Chinese characters until the nineteenth century and thereafter wrote its own language in the alphabet. Like this, most countries borrow another’s script. Yet our Korean people are one of the few countries to possess a native script ‘originally created for its own language alone.’ It is precisely ‘Hunminjeongeum, Hangeul.’ Hangeul is not a mere script. Let me explain why it is an enormous gift from Heavenly Parent for our Korean people and for all humankind. Koreans use Hangeul every day, yet do not really know its greatness even as they use it. Perhaps that is why the saying goes, ‘It is dark beneath the lamp.’ But foreigners attest to the wonder of Hangeul. At present more than five million foreigners are encountering Hangeul, and the number is rising steeply. Today let us look at Hangeul from the viewpoint of foreigners.

*Part 1 — The Only Script Whose Creator, Date of Creation, and Principle of Creation Are Known

Neither Egyptian hieroglyphs, nor the English alphabet, nor Chinese characters have any record of ‘who made them, when, and by what principle.’ Most scripts were formed by gradual change over thousands of years, so their makers cannot be specified. But Hangeul, whose creator (King Sejong the Great), time of creation (1443), and principle of creation (the Hunminjeongeum Haerye edition) are all documented in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, is the one and only such script in the history of humankind.

It is commonly believed that the scholars of the Hall of Worthies (Jiphyeonjeon) created Hangeul at King Sejong’s command. But according to the Annals, it is a script that King Sejong himself researched and created in secret, out of a heart that loved the people. At the time East Asia was within the Sinocentric civilization centered on Chinese characters, so to make a separate script could invite friction with China and met the fierce opposition of the officials. Right after Hangeul was created, Confucian scholars including Choe Man-ri, deputy director of the Hall of Worthies, staking their lives, submitted memorials in opposition. Even so, the reason King Sejong pushed the creation through against fierce opposition, and afterward, together with the scholars of the Hall of Worthies, published and disseminated the Haerye edition, was one thing only: the spirit of love for the people (aemin jeongsin, 愛民精神).

In world history, King Sejong is the only case of a monarch making a new script out of such love for the people, purely to improve their lives. The Annals of King Sejong reveal his character well. In summary, he is described as a king who fully combined virtue (德), benevolence (仁), art (藝), learning (學), wisdom (智), and courage (勇). One might think this an exaggeration like the Yongbieocheonga (a eulogy praising the royal ancestors), but looking at his actual life and achievements, he was a great king who brought about the greatest age of peace and prosperity in the history of Korea. Perhaps, without such a king’s resolve, the work would have been unthinkable within the Chinese-character cultural sphere of the time.

*Part 2 — A Scientific Script Modeled on the Speech Organs

The ‘Explanation of the Design of the Letters (Jejahae)’ in the Hunminjeongeum Haerye edition records in detail the principle by which the letters were made. It says the five basic consonants directly gave shape to the way the human speech organs move when making a sound.

ㄱ was modeled on the shape of the root of the tongue blocking the throat; ㄴ on the shape of the tip of the tongue touching the upper gum; ㅁ on the shape of the mouth; ㅅ on the shape of a tooth (齒); and ㅇ on the shape of the throat. For the vowels, taking as basic letters heaven (ㆍ), earth (ㅡ), and human (ㅣ) — signifying the Eastern-philosophical ‘heaven, earth, and human (cheon-ji-in, 天地人)’ — eleven basic vowels were systematically derived.

And by the method of gathering the three letter-parts — the initial (consonant), the medial (vowel), and the final (consonant) — within a square block, one syllable was written. Because the shapes of the letters were thus made after the shapes of the body’s organs, Hangeul is the only script in the world in which one makes the sound according to the shape of the letter.

The preface to the Hangeul Haerye edition declares thus: ‘Even the sound of the wind, the cry of the crane, the crowing of the rooster, and the barking of the dog can all be written down just as they sound.’ Looking at Hangeul, the process by which sound is made within the mouth is visible to the eye. Any sound can be written, just as heard, with consonant and vowel signs. Because of this principle, once foreigners master just about forty letters — the twenty-four Hangeul letters plus the double consonants and compound vowels — they can immediately read even Korean they are seeing for the first time.

*Part 3 — The Greatness of Hangeul, Recognized First by Foreigners

In 1886, a 23-year-old American missionary, Hulbert, came to Joseon. Not long after encountering Hangeul, he grasped its principle and said, ‘In its basic rules and its principle of producing sound, I have not found a script superior to Hangeul. There is no script anywhere in the world to compare with Hangeul.’

Professor McCawley of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago in the United States, every year when Hangeul Day came on October 9, invited faculty and students and held a ‘Hangeul Day party.’ Friends, have you ever seen a Korean who held a Hangeul Day party? Have we not simply used that amazing Hangeul without ever being much amazed by it? Yet he said this about why he commemorated Hangeul Day: ‘Hangeul is the most genius script existing in the world. Hangeul, created by King Sejong the Great in 1443, is astonishing even by linguistic standards. All the world’s linguists ought to commemorate Hangeul Day as a holiday.’

UNESCO, since 1990, awards each year the ‘King Sejong Literacy Prize’ to an individual or organization that has contributed to eradicating illiteracy in the world. This is because the very spirit by which King Sejong created Hunminjeongeum — so that all the people might have equal access to knowledge — coincides exactly with the spirit UNESCO pursues. The American science magazine Discover, in its June 1994 issue, praised Hangeul as ‘the most rational writing system in the world.’ The British documentary writer John Man, in his book, called Hangeul ‘the best alphabet that all languages dream of.’ Besides these, there is good reason that countless linguists, translators, and people who have studied Hangeul attest with one voice that ‘Hangeul is a language of blessing.’

In English-speaking countries, because English is already the world’s common language, the motivation to learn another language is very low. Yet an unusual phenomenon occurred in Britain. Without the government encouraging it, and though Korean is not even a university-entrance subject, British students began to seek out and learn Korean on their own. Schools supporting Korean classes numbered only three in 2012, but by 2023 had exploded to seventy. Behind this is the appeal of the K-wave, but there is much testimony that the greater motive was the astonishment that ‘Hangeul was a script one could master this quickly.’

(Korean as felt by the foreigner ‘Riku-ssaem’ — watch the 3-minute video.)

*Part 4 — A Language That Holds Relationship, Emotion, and Character

Foreign linguists evaluate Korean as, beyond the level of a language for conveying facts, ‘a language that expresses the relationships, attitudes, and emotions between people in extreme detail.’

In the video you watched, it is said that within the mere ten characters of ‘ittaga osindandeyo’ five meanings are contained.

① the information ‘he comes later’; ② the information that it is something heard from someone; ③ the speaker’s cautious attitude in bringing it up; ④ an honorific elevating the one who comes; ⑤ consideration for the listener. To translate all these meanings into English becomes: ‘I heard that he might be coming a bit later. I’m not sure if I should mention this, but I wanted to let you know.’ A full 113 characters. And even so, the honorific ‘osinda (he honorably comes)’ is a concept that does not exist in English, so it is said to be untranslatable. For interest, shall we write and read this in the languages of the world?

Korean: 이따가 오신다던데요.
English: They said they’re coming later.
French: Ils ont dit qu’ils viendraient plus tard.
Japanese: 後で来ると言っていましたよ。
Chinese: 他们说一会儿来。
Greek: Είπαν ότι θα έρθουν αργότερα.
Hebrew: הם אמרו שהם יבואו מאוחר יותר. (read right-to-left)
Arabic: قالوا إنهم سيأتون متأخرًا. (read right-to-left)

Arabic may feel very difficult in form, but it should not be dismissed: it is one of the world’s five great languages, used at present by 500 million people.

Looking at the text here, the sense each language gives is different. People say that when they look at Hangeul it feels somehow modern, like the language of an advanced civilization. And they find the many round letters like ㅇㅇㅇ cute. And when English-speakers hear the sounds, they say German sounds harsh, Russian frightening, and Chinese as if angry, while Korean sounds like a musical melody. Korean has even syllables but rich changes of pitch letter by letter, so it seems to sound like a melody.

And among the many languages, there are a great many in danger of disappearing because they have no script to write them. Among these, the Cia-Cia, a minority people of Indonesia, about a hundred thousand of whom use their own language, had no script to write it and so recorded it in the alphabet. But the alphabet could not properly transcribe the pronunciation, so it fell into danger of disappearing. Since Korean, however, can transcribe every sound, in 2009 they adopted Hangeul, on a trial basis, as a writing script alongside the alphabet.

*Part 5 — Korean Is a Language of Heart (Simjeong)

For Koreans, to say ‘jeong deureotda (jeong has formed)’ is quite natural. Yet even this important word, when one tries to translate it into a foreign language, gives trouble because no fitting word can be found. It is not love, not attachment, not bond. Jeong is the feeling that seeps in as one lives together over a long time — the concept that even with a person one dislikes, living together, even ‘miun jeong (jeong of dislike)’ arises. Yet since no language has a fitting word to express this feeling, the interpreter must wring his head to explain it. If I say, ‘Aigo, jeong had formed, and you are leaving already,’ the interpreter seems to rattle off something in interpretation, but in truth the interpreter cannot interpret the heart (simjeong). So I think it is because foreigners cannot express emotion by language alone that they have naturally developed the habit of gesturing much when they speak.

‘Han (恨)’ is the same. How does one translate the word ‘han’? Grief, resentment, sorrow, longing… In fact ‘han’ is all of these and none of them. It is a sorrow suffered from a wrong one could not pour out but repressed deep in the breast — yet a sorrow that does not explode into rage but, being repressed, is sublimated into jeong. The ‘han’ a parent feels toward an unfilial child is, beyond resentment, another name for love. The heart of True Mother now is precisely this heart of han. Shut in prison, she has pain, resentment, and sorrow, yet she is not confined in them — it is a love that aches because it loves, the heart of han. No language in the world can hold this han. In Japanese, urami (恨み/怨み: resentment, grudge, hatred), kuyashisa (悔しさ: vexation, mortification), and kanashimi (哀しみ/悲しみ: sorrow) all differ in nuance from han, and cannot be its direct translation.

Also ‘samuchida’ is the expression of the deepest longing. ‘Bogo sipda (I want to see you)’ and ‘bogo sipeo samuchinda (I long to see you so it pierces me)’ are entirely different words. ‘Samuchida’ expresses the state in which longing digs into the skin and seeps into the very bones. In English it is translated as ‘miss someone terribly,’ but the nuance felt is entirely different. Just before Sim Cheong leaps into the Indangsu, she looks up to Heaven: ‘Father! Your daughter goes; may you, Father, open your eyes and behold all things of the world!’ — the heart of filial-love that pierces to the bone. All of this is expressed in the single word ‘samuchinda.’ Because there was such a language of heart, Koreans could accurately recognize that emotion, share it, be consoled, and hand it down to their descendants, so that it became culture.

And ‘aigo’ is an all-purpose interjection that holds every emotion in the world. Among the expressions foreigners find most striking about Koreans, they name ‘aigo.’ It is because the range of emotion contained in this one word is so astonishing. In hard times, ‘Aigo~ I could die’; seeing a cute baby, ‘Aigo~ how pretty’; suffering something absurd, ‘Aigo~ big trouble’; when deeply moved, ‘Aigo~ how good’; and before one who has passed away, ‘Aigo~ what shall I do’ — but English has no all-purpose interjection like ‘aigo.’ At a house of mourning, saying ‘Wow’ would be a disaster; one must say ‘Oh, no.’

And what is very hard when interpreting or translating Korean is precisely the Korean expressions for food. ‘Eolkeunhada (pleasantly spicy-hot), guseuhada (savory-nutty), gamchilmat nanda (has a rich, moreish taste), siwonhada (refreshing, hits the spot).’ There is no exact English or French counterpart to these words. The French translator Ms. Kaina said, ‘When the subtitle gamchilmat comes up, I really feel I could collapse on the spot. However well I translate it, for a foreign viewer who has never eaten Korean food, it is hard to imagine that taste — because the very concept of gamchilmat is a word that does not exist.’

Korean is so extremely developed in expressions that directly describe taste, texture, color, sensation, and emotion that, from a foreigner’s standpoint, it makes their head cramp. They faint on seeing that the Korean dictionary has over fifty words expressing red alone: ‘ppalgatta, saetppalgatta, balgatta, balgaseureumhada, ppalgamurehada, beolgeotda, sibeolgeotda, beolgeujukjukhada, bukda, geombukda, bulgeuseureumhada, jinhongsaek (crimson), seonhongsaek (scarlet), pitbit (blood-color)…’ Thus Koreans express bright-family red, dark-family red, murky red, transparent red, joyful red, sorrowful red — all differently. It is also a point at which foreigners marvel, saying they have never seen a language that brings sound and feeling so vividly to life. To memorize and distinguish such onomatopoeia (mimicking sounds: a brook going joljol, jjoljjol, jaljal) and mimetic words (expressing what is seen: donggeul-donggeul, dunggeul-dunggeul, daenggul-daenggul, dwinggul-dwinggul) is impossible. A Korean, even inventing on the spot a new word never heard before, instantly understands its feeling. But English-speaking users cannot share this ‘taste of words’ as Koreans do. In English, if I change a consonant or vowel a little as I please, the feeling does not change; rather the meaning changes entirely, or it becomes nonsense of no known nationality. Big → hardening the consonant, Pik? or Bbig? One could never infer, as in Korean, ‘Does it mean harder and bigger?’ This is the real reason linguists call Korean ‘a genius language.’

And Hangeul has another wonderful strength. In Korean, even if you change the word order, the meaning still comes through.

In Korean, particles (i/ga, eul/reul, ege, eseo) attach to each word and clearly mark whether that word is the subject, the object, or the place. So even when the word order changes, the meaning comes through. Let us look at an example.

Cheolsu-ga Yeonghui-reul saranghanda ✅ Yeonghui-reul Cheolsu-ga saranghanda ✅ Saranghanda Cheolsu-ga Yeonghui-reul ✅
Yeonghui-reul saranghanda Cheolsu-ga ✅ Saranghanda Yeonghui-reul Cheolsu-ga ✅ Cheolsu-ga saranghanda Yeonghui-reul ✅ (all: “Cheolsu loves Yeonghui”)

Why does this work? Because once ‘ga’ attaches to ‘Cheolsu,’ Cheolsu is always the subject, and once ‘reul’ attaches to ‘Yeonghui,’ Yeonghui is always the object.

By contrast, in English, Chinese, French, and Spanish, the position of a word is the grammar. The noun that comes first automatically becomes the subject. If the order changes, the meaning is reversed or it makes no sense.

Cheolsu loves Younghee ✅ Younghee loves Cheolsu ❌ (reversed!)
Loves Cheolsu Younghee ❌ Cheolsu Younghee loves ❌

And the honorific system of Korean is the most refined relationship-language in the world. In Korean, the honorific system changes according to whom one speaks to. ‘Bap meogeosseo?’ ‘Jinji japsusyeotseumnikka?’ ‘Siksaneun?’ ‘Kkinieun ttaewotnya?’ all mean the same thing, but a Korean, before speaking, first thinks whether the other is an elder or a friend, and then speaks. And this is what foreigners make the most mistakes with when they first learn to speak on coming to Korea. When a foreigner makes a mistake, it is laughed off; but when a Korean makes a mistake, the relationship ends that very day.

So Korean is a language of Heaven that values ‘we (uri)’ more than ‘I.’

‘Uri eomma (our mom),’ ‘uri nampyeon (our husband),’ ‘uri nara (our country)’… Which country uses the word ‘uri (we/our)’ the most? It is ‘uri nara (our country).’

Though it is clearly ‘my mom,’ how does one say ‘our mom’ in front of others? It is because ‘we’ comes before ‘I.’ This is a concept foreigners do not have. When one ought to say ‘My mom’ but says ‘Our mom,’ the other person is baffled: ‘Huh? But you and I have different mothers?’ This difference is not a mere linguistic habit but comes from the character of Koreans, who wish to treat others too as their own family.

Loyalty (忠) is to put ‘our country’ before ‘I.’ Filial piety (孝) is to put ‘our parents’ before ‘I.’ Fidelity (烈) is to devote ‘I’ for the most precious beloved. This character did not arise by itself. Because for thousands of years they thought in this language of heart, spoke in this language of heart, and taught their children in this language of heart, such a character became culturally settled. Language is the vessel that holds a people’s heart.

Because there was the special vessel called Hangeul, the differently-grained character of loyalty, filial piety, and fidelity (忠孝烈) could be expressed and handed down.

*Part 6 — Hangeul, Optimized for the Digital Age

Hangeul has many unrivaled strengths, widely recognized even in computer science in the digital age. On the computer keyboard it is designed so that the left hand strikes consonants and the right hand vowels, making ultra-fast typing possible. Especially when sending a message, in Hangeul the letter is completed the instant it is struck, whereas Japanese or Chinese, which use Chinese characters together with kana, must, each time, go through the process of inputting the sound and then confirming and selecting the desired character. For this reason Hangeul is several times ahead in efficiency. Also, in the digital environment that transmits compressed information, Hangeul is structurally very advantageous. Since Hangeul not only has an inexhaustible number of expressible sounds but also because one letter clearly makes only one sound, it is, even from the standpoint of artificial intelligence (AI), an optimal language for reducing errors in sound recognition. Thanks to this, it also shows very high accuracy in automatic video captioning on YouTube and the like. Moreover, Hangeul is overwhelmingly faster and more efficient than English, Japanese, and Chinese even in ‘the cognitive speed at which a person reads and understands the caption shown on the screen.’ Hereafter, in the full-fledged age of artificial intelligence, Hangeul’s digital compatibility, optimized for that age, will be a great competitive strength and blessing for us.

*Conclusion — The Providence of God Contained in Hangeul

Six hundred years ago, King Sejong created Hangeul out of pure love for the people, braving the fierce opposition of his officials. No one could have imagined that this Hangeul would in the future become a treasure of humankind that unifies the language of all the world’s people. But now, through the inexhaustible possibilities Hangeul holds, that dreamlike age is drawing near as reality. Hereafter, for the whole world to realize the peaceful world of ‘one human family under Heavenly Parent,’ one language and one script must without fail be the premise. And that one script that will bind the world into one is precisely ‘Hangeul.’

There is a necessary reason Hangeul must become the world’s common language. Because Hangeul is the only script that can wholly express the deep inner world and heart of a human being, it can most wholly record and convey the deep truth of Heaven. That is why True Parents, from as early as the 1950s — when Korea’s national power was at its weakest and we longed more for foreign things than our own — already emphasized countless times that ‘the world must without fail learn Korean.’ Time passed, Korea achieved dazzling development, and today, riding the K-wave fervor of K-pop, K-drama, K-food, and so on, people of the whole world are falling for the inexhaustible charm of Hangeul. Now the globalization of Hangeul has become, beyond a mere hope, a realizable future.

Of course, by the charm of the K-wave and the script alone, it may be hard to surmount the high walls and psychological resistance of the existing English-speaking world. So we need ‘K-truth (the words of the Principle).’ When the people of the world come to realize the deep heart-world of Heavenly Parent contained in the words of the Principle, they cannot but vie with one another to learn Korean of their own accord, in order to understand that truth wholly. Even if the great powers put up barriers, the current of the world’s people thirsting for truth can never be blocked. Do you not now fully feel the prophecy and words of True Parents, who said, ‘From now on, going out into the world, even just teaching Korean, one will have no worry of making a living’?

Then the task is how to make the whole world take interest in our Unification Principle, which the world misunderstands as a ‘minor religion’ and regards as heresy. The answer lies in the coming age of artificial intelligence. When the age of AGI (artificial general intelligence), which transcends human intelligence beyond AI, comes, the super-intelligence, on the basis of scientific and logical discernment, will clearly sort out the truth or falsehood (right and wrong) of all the world’s religions and learning. In that process, AGI may perhaps be the first to find out and attest to the world the value of the ‘Unification Principle,’ the most scientific, rational, and empirically systematized of all.

The purpose for which Heavenly Parent chose our Korean people and raised us as a chosen people is precisely to complete the great epic of realizing a true peaceful world on this earth. If, upon the heart-culture of loyalty, filial piety, and fidelity that we have forged by overcoming countless hardships, K-truth, the K-wave, and Hangeul advance as one, that spiritual power will completely transform the whole world.