Hangul in the context of Input method

Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in Asia in 1945, it has been politically divided at or near the 38th parallel between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK). Both countries proclaimed independence in 1948, and the two countries fought the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. The region is bordered by China to the north and Russia to the northeast, across the Amnok (Yalu) and Duman (Tumen) rivers, and is separated from Japan to the southeast by the Korea Strait.

Known human habitation of the Korean peninsula dates to 40,000 BC. The kingdom of Gojoseon, which according to tradition was founded in 2333 BC, fell to the Han dynasty in 108 BC. It was followed by the Three Kingdoms period, in which Korea was divided into Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. In 668 AD, Silla conquered Baekje and Goguryeo with the aid of the Tang dynasty, forming Unified Silla; Balhae succeeded Goguryeo in the north. In the late 9th century, Unified Silla collapsed into three states, beginning the Later Three Kingdoms period. In 918, Goguryeo was resurrected as Goryeo, which achieved what has been called a "true national unification" by Korean historians, as it unified both the Later Three Kingdoms and the ruling class of Balhae after its fall. Goryeo, whose name developed into the modern exonym "Korea", was highly cultured and saw the invention of the first metal movable type. During the 13th century, Goryeo became a vassal state of the Mongol Empire. Goryeo overthrew Mongol rule before falling to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established the Joseon dynasty in 1392. The first 200 years of Joseon were marked by peace; the Hangul, the Korean alphabet was created and Confucianism became influential. This ended with Japanese and Qing invasions, which brought devastation to Joseon and led to Korean isolationism. After the invasions, an isolated Joseon experienced another nearly 200-year period of peace and prosperity, along with cultural and technological development. In the final years of the 19th century, Japan forced Joseon to open up and Joseon experienced turmoil such as the Kapsin Coup, Donghak Peasant Revolution, and the assassination of Empress Myeongseong. In 1895, Japan defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese War and China lost suzerainty over Korea and Korea was placed under further Japanese influence. In 1897, the centuries old Joseon was replaced by the Korean Empire with the Joseon's last king, Gojong, becoming the Emperor of the Korean Empire. Japan's further victory in the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, expelled Russian influence in Korea and Manchuria. In 1905, the Korean Empire became a protectorate of the Empire of Japan. In 1910, the Empire of Japan officially annexed the Korean peninsula.

Writing systems are used to record human language, and may be classified according to certain common features.

A unicase or unicameral alphabet is a writing script that has no separate cases for its letters. Semitic abjads such as Hebrew and Arabic, Brahmic scripts such as Devanagari, Tamil and Thai, Chinese characters, Hangul and the Iberian and Georgian scripts are unicase writing systems, while scripts like Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian are bicameral, as they have two cases for each letter, e.g. B and b, Б and б, Β and β, or Բ and բ. Individual characters can also be called unicameral if they are used as letters with a generally bicameral alphabet but have only one form for both cases; for example, the ʻokina as used in Polynesian languages and the glottal stop as used in Nuu-chah-nulth are unicameral.

Most modern writing systems originated as unicase orthographies. The Latin script originally had only majuscule forms directly derived from the Greek alphabet, which were originally viable for being chiseled into stone. At the same time, everyday writing was carried out in a cursive variant of the block capitals, which during the Middle Ages evolved into new letterforms for use in running text that were more legible and faster to write with an ink pen, such as Carolingian minuscule. Originally, use of the two forms was mutually exclusive, but it became a common compromise to use both in tandem, which ultimately had additional benefits in areas such as legibility. The later minuscule became the "lowercase" forms, while the original majuscule became the "uppercase" forms.

Koreanic is a compact language family consisting of the Korean and Jeju languages. The latter is often described as a dialect of Korean but is mutually unintelligible with mainland Korean varieties. Alexander Vovin has also suggested that the Yukjin dialect of the far northeast should be similarly distinguished.

Korean has been richly documented since the introduction of the Hangul alphabet in the 15th century. Earlier renditions of Korean using Chinese characters, however, are much more difficult to interpret.

Alphabetic writing – where letters generally correspond to individual sounds in a language (phonemes), as opposed to having symbols for syllables or words – was likely invented once in human history. The Proto-Sinaitic script emerged during the 2nd millennium BC among a community of West Semitic laborers in the Sinai Peninsula. Exposed to the idea of writing through the complex system of Egyptian hieroglyphs, their script instead wrote their native Canaanite language. With the possible exception of hangul in Korea, all later alphabets used throughout the world either descend directly from the Proto-Sinaitic script, or were directly inspired by it. It has been conjectured that the community selected a small number of those commonly seen in their surroundings to describe the sounds, as opposed to the semantic values of their own languages. This script was partly influenced by hieratic, an older cursive script derived from hieroglyphs. Mainly through the Phoenician alphabet that descended from Proto-Semitic, alphabetic writing spread throughout West and South Asia, North Africa, and Europe during the 1st millennium BC.

Some modern authors distinguish between consonantal alphabets, with the term abjad coined for them in 1996, and true alphabets with letters for both consonants and vowels. In this narrower sense, the first true alphabet would be the Greek alphabet, which was adapted from the Phoenician alphabet. Many linguists are skeptical of the value of wholly separating the two categories. Latin, the most widely used alphabet today, in turn derives from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, themselves derived from Phoenician.

In East Asian writing systems, gothic typefaces (simplified Chinese: 黑体; traditional Chinese: 黑體; pinyin: hēitǐ; Jyutping: haak1 tai2; Japanese: ゴシック体, romanized: goshikku-tai; Korean: 돋움, romanized: dodum, 고딕체 godik-che) are a type style characterized by strokes of even thickness and lack of decorations, akin to sans serif styles in Western typography. It is the second most commonly used style in East Asian typography, after Ming.

Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. Chinese characters, Korean hangul, and Japanese kana may be oriented along either axis, as they consist mainly of disconnected logographic or syllabic units, each occupying a square block of space, thus allowing for flexibility for which direction texts can be written, be it horizontally from left-to-right, horizontally from right-to-left, vertically from top-to-bottom, and even vertically from bottom-to-top.

Traditionally, written Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese are written vertically in columns going from top to bottom and ordered from right to left, with each new column starting to the left of the preceding one. The stroke order and stroke direction of Chinese characters, Vietnamese chữ Nôm, Korean hangul, and kana all facilitate writing in this manner. In addition, writing in vertical columns from right to left facilitated writing with a brush in the right hand while continually unrolling the sheet of paper or scroll with the left. Since the nineteenth century, it has become increasingly common for these languages to be written horizontally, from left to right, with successive rows going from top to bottom, under the influence of European languages such as English, although vertical writing is still frequently used in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Macau, and Taiwan.

Sejong (Korean: 세종; Hanja: 世宗; May 15, 1397 – April 8, 1450), commonly known as Sejong the Great (세종대왕; 世宗大王), was the fourth monarch of the Koreanic state Joseon. He ruled from 1418 to his death in 1450. He is widely regarded as the greatest king in Korean history, and is remembered for the creation of Hangul, the native alphabet of the Korean language.

Sejong was born the third son of the future King Taejong (r. 1400–1418). He was regarded as gifted, moreso than the troubled crown prince Grand Prince Yangnyŏng. In mid-1418, Yangnyŏng was deposed and Sejong made the crown prince. Months later, Taejong abdicated and Sejong was crowned king. Taejong served as king emeritus until his death in 1422.

Korean calligraphy, also known as Seoye (Korean: 서예), is the Korean tradition of artistic writing. Calligraphy in Korean culture involves both Hanja (Chinese logograph) and Hangul (Korean native alphabet).

Early Korean calligraphy was exclusively in Hanja, or the Chinese-based logography first used to write the Korean language. During the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties, utilitarian objects were often inscribed with calligraphy such as brush stands, padlocks, incense burners, porcelain, lacquer, and branding irons. Even after the invention of the Korean alphabet Hangul in 1443, Korean calligraphers preferred Chinese characters as they saw it as more prestigious. Hanja continued to be used as the official script until the late 19th century. This changed when both North Korea and South Korea, after their split, separately institutionalized Hangul as the official orthography of Korean. Today many calligraphers, particularly in South Korea, are experimenting with new styles of Hangul, which has become an important part of the larger practice of Korean calligraphy.

Middle Korean is the period in the history of the Korean language succeeding Old Korean and yielding to Early Modern Korean in the late 16th century.The boundary between the Old and Middle periods is traditionally identified with the establishment of Goryeo in 918 and the associated transition of the prestige dialect from the Southeast to the center of the peninsula, but some scholars have argued for the Mongol invasions of Korea in the mid-13th century. Middle Korean is divided into Early and Late periods corresponding to Goryeo (until 1392) and Joseon respectively.

It is difficult to extract linguistic information from texts of the Early period, which are written with Chinese characters (called Hanja in Korean). The situation was transformed in 1446 by the introduction of the Hangul alphabet, so that Late Middle Korean provides the pivotal data for the history of Korean.

Samguk sagi (Korean: 삼국사기; Hanja: 三國史記; lit. History of the Three Kingdoms) is a historical record of the Three Kingdoms of Korea: Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. Completed in 1145, it is well-known in Korea as the oldest surviving chronicle of Korean history.

The Samguk sagi is written in Classical Chinese, the written language of the literati of ancient Korea. Its compilation was ordered by King Injong of Goryeo (r. 1122–1146) and undertaken by a government official and historian named Kim Pusik with his team of junior scholars. The document has been digitized by the National Institute of Korean History and is available online with Modern Korean translation in Hangul.

The native Korean alphabet, called Hangul (한글) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글) in North Korea, is a writing system for the Korean language. It was mostly completed around late 1443 to early 1444 and officially published in 1446. It was invented to serve a number of purposes, especially to aid general literacy in Korea.

Before Hangul's invention, Korea had been using Hanja (Chinese characters) and variants of it to write Korean. However, the script was poorly suited for transcribing Korean, and its difficulty contributed to high illiteracy amongst commoners.

Hunminjeongeum (Korean: 훈민정음; Hanja: 訓民正音; lit. 'The Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People') is a 1446 work that formally introduced the first native Korean alphabet. That alphabet was originally also called "Hunminjeongeum", although it is now widely called "Hangul" (international spelling; spelled in South Korea "Hangeul") or "Chosŏn'gŭl" (in North Korea).

The term Hunminjeongeum is used in a number of different ways, often due to the various editions and sections of the text. The term is sometimes used to refer to only the first two sections of the text: the preface and description of Hangul. That "base" Hunminjeongeum is sometimes referred to as the Yeui (예의; 例義). There is also a commentary section, the Hunminjeongeum Haerye, that was published alongside the base Hunminjeongeum. Sometimes, the base Hunminjeongeum and Haerye together are sometimes referred to only as Hunminjeongeum.

Hunminjeongeum Haerye (Korean: 훈민정음 해례; Hanja: 訓民正音解例), or simply Haerye, refers to either a commentary section on the text Hunminjeongeum or to copies of the Hunminjeongeum that contain the commentary section. The Hunminjeongeum and commentary were published together as a single text around October 1446 (Gregorian calendar). Together, they introduce the native Korean alphabet Hangul.

The Joseon king Sejong the Great (r. 1418–1450) authored the preface to the overall text as well as the basic introduction of the letters. The following members of the government agency Hall of Worthies coauthored the Haerye section: Chŏng Inji, Ch'oe Hang, Pak P'aengnyŏn, Sin Sukchu, Sŏng Sammun, Kang Hŭian, Yi Kae, and Yi Sŏllo [ko]. The text's postface was written by Chŏng Inji. The commentary and postface describe how the shapes of Hangul's letters were derived.

Cia-Cia, also known as (South) Buton or Butonese, is an Austronesian language spoken principally around the city of Baubau on the southern tip of Buton island, off the southeast coast of Sulawesi, in Indonesia. It is written using the Latin and Hangul scripts.

Gyeongbokgung (Korean: 경복궁; Hanja: 景福宮; pronounced [kjʌŋbok̚k͈uŋ]) is a former royal palace in Seoul, South Korea. Established in 1395, it was the first royal palace of the Joseon dynasty, and is now one of the most significant tourist attractions in the country.

The palace was among the first landmarks to be established in Seoul. It flourished under the 1418–1450 reign of Sejong the Great; Sejong led the creation of the native Korean script Hangul at the palace. In 1592, amidst the Imjin War, the palace was completely burned down. Plans to repair the palace fell through amidst funding shortages after the war. It would not be restored until the late 19th century, during the reign of the penultimate monarch Gojong.