The day highlighted in today’s doodle is known as Hangul Day (), which is the only festival in the world to honour an alphabet. The Hangul language of Korea contributes to regional literacy rate growth. On this date in 1446, Hangul was formally adopted as the country’s writing system.
Josun, who utilised Chinese characters before Hangul, had to learn these intricate and difficult to read characters. King Sejong devised Hangul, a much simpler alphabet with 24 letters, 14 consonants, and 10 vowels, to address this problem. To this day, practically all Korean is written in Hangul, and this effective writing system is a lot responsible for Korea’s high literacy rate of almost 100%!
The South Korean government established Hangul Day as a legal holiday in 1945. Different towns have different traditions for today. The King Sejong Museum in Seoul is frequented by many Koreans, while others might utilise the day off to consider how their country is doing or to spend time with loved ones.
Happy Hangul Day, Korea!
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