Hangul, Korea's native alphabet crafted in the 15th century by King Sejong the Great, was not a gradual invention—it was a deliberate masterpiece of linguistic engineering, created to empower ordinary people with literacy. Its design is rooted in featural representation, where the shapes of the letters mirror the articulation of sounds—such as the tongue touching the palate or lips forming a consonant—making it both intuitive and scientifically grounded.
Before Hangul, Koreans largely relied on Chinese characters and several cumbersome indigenous scripts, which were difficult to learn and inaccessible to most. By contrast, Hangul was built to be straightforward and inclusive: even those without formal education could learn to read and write independently. As its foundational text states, "A wise man may learn them before the morning is over; a foolish man in ten days".
Additionally, Hangul encodes vowel harmony principles, using simple line and dot configurations to reflect elements like yin and yang, a concept that is emblematic of Korean phonology and aesthetics. Linguists have praised Hangul as perhaps the most logical and accessible writing system in use today, combining phonemic precision with morphological clarity.
If you spend just a couple of hours studying Hangul, then you can read all the signs on the street and buildings; it's that simple. Why don't you try learning Hangul while you are attending MICCAI 2025?