Ch'oe Manli, anti-Hangul Confucian scholar
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In 1444, an associate professor (bujehag 부제학 副提學) in the Hall of Worthies, Ch'oe Manli (최만리 崔萬里; d. October 23, 1445), along with other Confucian scholars, spoke out against the creation of hangul (then called eonmun). See here for the Classical Chinese text and English translation (less than felicitous, but easily available) of Ch'oe's 1444 protest against the reforms leading to Hangul. As we all know, King Sejong (1397-1450; r. 1418-1450) nonetheless promulgated Hangul in 1446, so I wondered whether anything unfavorable happened to Ch'oe as a result (note that he died the year after delivering his protest and the year before the promulgation of Hangul). Ross King kindly replied to my inquiry on this matter as follows:
Ch'oe Malli was (in essence) fired by King Sejong after his memorial, then reinstated a day later, after which he resigned his government post, and went back to his home town. He died in 1445 a year or so later. There is actually nothing in his memorial explicitly in opposition to the new script itself; rather, on the basis of what comes down to us in the Sillok (Veritable Records) and Ch'oe's memorial itself, scholars in South Korea tend to view him as having opposed Sejong's ideas around reforming Sino-Korean pronunciation, along with Sejong's work—concurrent with and probably the major impetus for inventing the alphabet in the first place—on the 'translation' of the Yunhui rime dictionary (古今韻會擧要) that eventually took shape as the Tongguk chŏngun 동국정운(東國正韻), or Correct Rimes of the Eastern Nation (1447). Much of this is covered already in Gari K. Ledyard's amazing dissertation from 1966 (published in 1998 in Seoul by Sin'gu Munhwasa: The Korean Language Reform of 1446, esp. ch. 3: "The Announcement and Early Progress of the Korean Alphabet," where he translates Ch'oe's memorial in full, with commentary). The authoritative Han'guk Minjok Munhwa Tae Paekkwasajŏn web-based encyclopedia page on Ch'oe Malli (written by no less than Professor Yi Sungnynŏng of SNU [Seoul National University]) notes that if one sees Ch'oe's opposition as being primarily targeted at Sejong's quixotic attempt to reform Sino-Korean pronunciation, history vindicates him, as this was ultimately a huge failure (as was the 洪武正韻 [VHM: vital information here])—but this underplays the ruling elite's opposition to the new alphabet. Thus, in the court of public opinion in South Korea, Ch'oe has been judged not only a traitorous sinophile, but worse—a traitor to the alphabet (inexcusable in a country where a sort of 'cult of hangeul' rules supreme).
Ross's observations are of extraordinary importance concerning the actual political and linguistic issues that were operative in this monumental struggle between reformist king and conformist scholars. My own humble opinion is that King Sejong, by advancing his cause for fundamental changes in the pronunciation of Korean vis-à-vis Chinese, was standing up for the dignity and independence of his own nation against the giant next door, whereas the scholars thought of themselves and their country as belonging to the great Confucian Way (MSM rúdào / K yudo 유도 儒道). It should be easy to see the fundamental issues that were at stake, as well as why King Sejong is viewed as a towering national hero, whereas Ch'oe Manli and his sinophilic colleagues have been seen as traitors to their land.
N.B.:
King Sejong "…is regarded as the greatest ruler in Korean history [VHM: that's saying a lot!], and is remembered as the inventor of Hangul, the native alphabet of the Korean language. (source)
King Sejong's epochal work introducing Hangul to the world in 1446 is most significantly titled Hunminjeongeum (Korean: 훈민정음; Hanja: 訓民正音; lit. "The Correct/Proper Sounds for the Instruction of the People").
Selected readings
- "Hangul as alphasyllabary" (5/14/25)
- "Hangul: Joseon subservience to Ming China" (5/14/22)
[Thanks to Bob Ramsey who, like Ross, has the highest regard for Gari Ledyard's remarkable 1966 Berkeley dissertation: "The Korean Language Reform of 1446: The Origin, Background, and Early History of the Korean Alphabet", later published in Korea in 1998 (ISBN 89-7668-066-9). As Bob says, "…it is the best work ever written on Korean writing history, both about writing before Hangul and then of the early history of the Korean alphabet itself, and the whole narrative in this dissertation is written in Gari's wonderful, inimitable prose style. And most important of all is his matchless translation of the 訓民正音 itself, the best there is".]
Victor Mair said,
May 26, 2025 @ 8:03 am
Sejong's invention and institutionalization of Hangul for Korea is comparable to Ataturk's alphabetization of Turkish. One day, someone will do this for Sinitic, but perhaps not en masse for the whole of China, rather more on the model of India or Europe — one language / province at a time. If Taiwan can escape a military conquest by the PRC, Formosa might be the first to go. Already, many of the criteria for separation of Taiwanese from the Mandarinate and its overarching bureaucratic language are in place.
Sejong did it, and his people love him for having done so. I witnessed that with my own eyes earlier this month. Someone will do it for Taiwanese, or Cantonese, or Shanghainese / Wu…, and they will be loved.
E. Harding said,
May 26, 2025 @ 8:46 am
I think the biggest reason Hangul never became popular before the late 19th century was because it is very unintuitive to write with one's chin up (which all Chinese character stroke order comes down to -thus the top->down/right->left writing direction).
Philip Taylor said,
May 26, 2025 @ 9:04 am
May I demonstrate my appalling ignorance by asking the significance of the apostrophe in Ch'oe Manli’s name (the first one, that is — the U+0027 : APOSTROPHE {single quote; APL quote} as opposed to the later U+2019 : RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK {single comma quotation mark}, and does its presence affect the pronunciation ?
Jonathan Smith said,
May 26, 2025 @ 12:18 pm
"There is actually nothing in his memorial explicitly in opposition to the new script itself; rather […] scholars in South Korea tend to view him as having opposed Sejong's ideas around reforming Sino-Korean pronunciation [and] on the 'translation' of the Yunhui rime dictionary"
Really? It is hard to understand this view on a naive reading of the linked memorial. Among other rather explicit stuff, the authors complain that "assembling characters by reference to sound is wholly contrary to tradition" (用音合字盡反於古); assert that "in the lands of China, from time immemorial, however different be regional practices there has been no case of the creation of a separate script on the basis of a regional tongue" (自古九州之內風土雖異未有因方言而別爲文字者); object that "if say a clerk were to achieve success as an official via eonmun, then all those to follow, so observing, would consider that these twenty-seven eonmun characters are sufficient to establish oneself […] such that decades latter there would naturally be few who knew munja" [i.e. The Script] (苟爲吏者以諺文而宦達則後進皆見其如此也以爲二十七字諺文足以立身於世 […] 則數十年之後知文字者必少); and dismiss as irrelevant the acknowledged fact that "one now might use eonmun to write directly the words of [commoners, here prisoners] (今以諺文直書其言).
Frank Chance said,
May 26, 2025 @ 2:20 pm
@Philip Taylor
This apostrophe is used in the McCune-Reischauer system of romanization of Korean to indicate that the ch of Ch'oe is aspirated. Since we do not have a marker for aspiration in English it is a bit complicated, and the MR system inherited it to some extent from the Wade-Giles system of romanizing Chinese. For a decent description of the MR system see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCune%E2%80%93Reischauer# and for the original ppublication describing the system see https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f-8H9pJxwCzT4z0pJIh1ogQhrLIpm7Pm/view?usp=drive_link
Jason said,
May 26, 2025 @ 11:13 pm
Fired, then reinstated only to resign a short time later, seems to me like Sejong offered him a very Sinitic form of face-saving.
Philip Taylor said,
May 27, 2025 @ 3:27 am
Thank you Frank, very much appreciated.