Hangul

Hangul is the Korean alphabet. Unlike the Chinese and Japanese writing systems, it is a simple alphabetical system representing the pronunciation of words, and unlike most alphabets which evolved over centuries, it was devised at one time in 1443 (or possibly 1444; there's a month or two of fuzziness in the records of when it started). The letters are combined together in blocks, making a larger number of total symbols than the basic letters of the alphabet, but they can be decomposed into a small number of pieces which have pronunciations under simple rules. Hangul has gradually displaced the older hanja writing system (which uses Chinese characters) and is now the primary system for writing Korean.

Links

 * Learn to read Korean in 15 minutes
 * Wikipedia article: Hangul