Sunshine

Hand on heart - who didn't associate the Korean script with the Chinese or Japanese language?
Almost everybody who sees pictures of Korea for the first time asks me the same question: "How difficult is it to learn these characters?"

Well, be ready for a surprise:
The Korean language does NOT use characters but a (relatively) simple alphabet.
While hangeul may appear to be logographic (like the Chinese characters), it actually is phonemic, a so-called writing system which was invented by King Sejong and introduced in 1446 in order to decrease the rate of illiterates (which used to be extremely high due to the previously used and difficult-to-learn Chinese characters (Hanja)).

Hangeul
The Korean alphabet consist of 24 basic Jamo (자모 = letter), 14 consonants and 10 vowels, all of which are equivalent to a letter of the Roman alphabet. Adding to the 24 come another 27 jamo, which are clusters of two or three letters.
As opposed to the Roman writing, the jamo are not written in succession but in square blocks. Each block contains at least two and up to 5 jamo. You begin reading from the top left part of each block and continue reading in a Z-shape.

The picture shows you the basic jamo with its respective Roman letter next to it.
The alphabet is relatively easy to learn and helps you a geat deal when vacationing in Korea (also refer to my Tourist Trap_Language Barrier).

Hanja
Even though Hangeul is used across the Korean peninsula, the Korean Chinese characters (Hanja) are still partially in use, especially in upper class newspapers. This is mainly to emphasize the meaning of a certain word in a context where the Korean Hangeul might not be clear enough.Korean writing
You will easily notice the different spellings for words while cruising the web or strolling through the streets of Seoul (e.g. Gangnam vs. Kangnam; Hangeul vs. Hangul). This is mainly due to the fact that Korea has more than one form of romanization:

a) McCune-Reischauer Romanization:
This sytem was developed in 1937 in order to represent the phonetic pronunciation for the Hangeul (Hangul). It was slightly amended in 1984 and officially replaced by the Revised Romanisation of Korean in the year 2000.

b) Revised Romanization of Korea
This system was developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language starting in 1995 and was released as the official romanization to the public on July 4, 2000. It eliminates many of the previously used special character (e.g. hyphen). The main reason for the reduction of special characters was to eliminate difficulty of entering diacritics on computers and, more importantly, rationalize Korean language with the plain ASCII text of internet domain names.