MANNAM: King Sejong was shocked! and made ‘훈민정음(Hun-min-jung-uem)’!

MANNAM: King Sejong was shocked! and made ‘훈민정음(Hun-min-jung-uem)’!

 In Joseon Dynasty period, there was a murder. A son killed his father by his own will. Even today, if we hear this kind of news on the media, people get shocked because we think, ‘how can a person kill his own father or mother?’ Especially, Korea is a country which has words and acts to respect the elders. So it must have been a big and shocking issue to all the people in Joseon.

 The king, who was Sejong at that time, was also shocked about this news. He couldn’t let the people commit a crime anymore. So he gathered his vassals to talk about this fact. After the meeting, King Sejong decides to make a book about how to act polite and have manners. So Sejong gathered all the information into one book. The book is [삼강행실도(Samgaghengsildo)]. It has many good examples of people who served their parents well.

 He wanted to make the people to follow the good examples. But there was a big problem. Although the book was published, the people couldn’t read it because they didn’t know how to read at all. To improve this problem, this time, Sejong made another book with pictures followed by words. So the people who can’t read can guess the content by the pictures. First this looked liked it was going on well rather it brought misunderstanding and confused the people.

 This is why King Sejong made ‘훈민정음(Hun-min-jung-uem). This is the background of the story. The people who learn Korean made by King Sejong! Come to MANNAM Korean class! Let’s share our information about Korean, and also Korean history. The small knowledge that we have can grow by informing each other! We can do that in MANNAM!