What do Martin Luther King, Jr. and King Sejong have in common?

Min-su: Who's that in the picture?

Cathy: That's Martin Luther King, Jr. Can't you recognize him?

Min-su: Of course, I've heard of him. I just never saw his picture.

Cathy: It's terrible that he was murdered, isn't it?

Min-su: Yes, but he did a lot with his life.

Cathy: Yes! It would be hard to imagine the U.S. today without him.

Min-su: What do you mean? I don't follow. He's dead right?

Cathy: Yes, but the effects of his life live on after him.

Min-su: I think I get it. Like King Sejong and hangeul.

Cathy: Yes. Without them, the world would be a very different place.

The dialogue above is from the lesson that I am teaching my 9th grade students this week. If I'm being honest, I have to admit-- though it embarrasses me now-- that when I first read this dialogue I couldn't help but snicker a little. The sheer improbability of this conversation and it's awkward wording aside, I found it very unlikely that a comparison could legitimately be made between the powerful and influential civil rights activist-- whose life impacted the collective psyche of a nation, providing hope and power to a increasingly tired and restless people, motivating racial reconciliation, calling for justice and altering the moral trajectory of America-- and the king who supposedly single-handedly created Korea's current written language. Undoubtedly in my mind the world would have been a different place without the work of Dr. King, but would Korea, never mind the whole world, truly be a different place if Koreans had just ended up using some other written form instead?

The mention of King Sejong in my students' textbook next to that of Martin Luther King, Jr. was mainly humorous to me as a manifestation of what I considered to be a slightly overly enthusiastic, though somewhat endearing (I know, how condescending can I get?), pride that Korean's express when talking about the king's invention of hangeul. My students were all shocked, for instance, to learn that before coming to Korea I had no idea who King Sejong was-- in fact, some of them even seemed a little offended. And I don't blame them; in spite of my biological ties to Korea, I had entered their country making blind assumptions about overzealous Korean national pride, without taking the time to learn about the historical figures and social developments that are most important to the people here.

My attitude remained unchanged until this past week when I actually learned a little something about King Sejong and the invention of hangeul at the GEPIK cultural orientation. And it turns out that there is a lot more to the story than I had originally picked up on.

The beauty of the language itself lies in its simplicity and practicality. It consists of only 24 letters total-- 10 vowels and 14 consonants. The written form of the consonants are loosely based on the shape or position of the teeth, mouth and throat when pronouncing the the sound, and it truly doesn't take more than a single afternoon of memorization to learn to read and pronounce the hangeul script. However, it is not simply the mechanics of the language, but the circumstances under which it arose and the corresponding socio-cultual accomplishments that it's introduction served, that make King Sejong's contribution so significant.

While it is not completely certain that King Sejong participated directly in the creation of the written language, he was atleast the one responsible for overseeing the project, and, I imagine, as king, he had a great deal of sway in the outcome. Certainly without his power and influence the project would never have come to fruition, as most aristocrats and power-holders in the kingdom were adamantly opposed to the the use of a new phonetic script in favor of the Chinese system currently in use by the government and high society. However, that system left the working-class majority of the kingdom's population illiterate. And King Sejong, demonstrating that he valued the empowerment of the lower classes through literacy to a much higher degree than he valued the maintenance of his own power structures, insisted on the creation of hangeul for the express purpose of making it possible for every person to be able to quickly and easily learn how to read and write-- no matter their life stage, social status or educational background. In his insistence upon the creation of hangeul, the king was working to empower the poor and to fight inequality.

Further, he wished to help create a cultural identity for the nation. Not only were Chinese characters often ill-adapted for the patterns and structures of Korean speech, but their use effectively shone a constant light on the impositon of a foreign mode of expression on the Korean people, which limited their ability to express themselves and resticted their forms of thinking. Sejong's contribution of a written language that was accessible to all Koreans from every level of society, then, helped promote a new level of freedom in expression that was unencumbered by alien modes of communication. And in so doing, it provided a basis for a renewal of shared cultural identity among the Korean people and reinforced the independence of Korea as a nation.

Building community and identity, promoting free expression, empowering the poor and opressed and taking steps to bridge inequality: this is all most certainly world changing stuff, and in light of it all, King Sejong and his contributions through the creation of hangeul are more than deserving of the credit that they are given. I can understand why it would be hard indeed to imagine Korea today without him...

This whole process of realization for me has expemplified one of the best, as well as the most painful, things about traveling overseas; and that is, that you get to really learn a lot about yourself-- you come face to face with your own presuppositions, assumptions and prejudices, all of which have an unnerving tendency to rear their heads in unexpected places. However, in encountering them head on and allowing them to come to light you are able to learn, stretch and grow. And that is an opportunity that I'm very thankful to have been given.