Before Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was created, Chinese characters were used to transcribe Korean words through systems such as idu, hyangchal and gugyeol. Since Chinese language and Korean language share few similarities, borrowing Chinese characters proved to be inefficient to reflect the spoken language. In addition, at the time when Sejong the Great was inventing Hangul the Ming dynasty had just come to power in China, which changed the pronunciation of Chinese characters, making it harder for Koreans to learn the new standard pronunciation to record their words. The illiteracy level also stayed high since reading and learning Chinese characters was restricted among the ordinary people. They were generally used in official documents by the ruling class. The ruling class took advantage of this and learning the Chinese characters became a symbol of power and privilege. In order to make written language more accessible for common people, Sejong the Great started creating Hangul secretly, since the ruling class would be appalled by the news.
Original spelling: 훈〮민져ᇰ〮ᅙᅳᆷ
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In this last line, some digital transcriptions including the one by the Academy of Korean Studies replaces 矣 with 耳.[15] /wiki/Academy_of_Korean_Studies
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