25 Facts About Choe Sejin

Choe Sejin is of the Goesan Choe clan and his courtesy name was Gongseo.

Choe Sejin is widely known for his research with the Korean hangul letters, and comparative studies with Chinese and Korean, which further led to the propagation of hangul during a time period when Chinese characters were used as the main system of writing.

Choe Sejin devised the modern Korean order of the hangul characters, and assigned names to the letters.

Choe Sejin was born into a middle-class family in Seoul.

Choe Sejin's father was Choe Jungbal, who was a translator and interpreter for the government.

Choe Sejin was known as very skilled as a translator and interpreter.

Choe Sejin was a target for the nobles' jealousy, and he was sacrificed in the factional strife and tumultuous political climate at the time.

Some were able to retain their acceptance due to familial ties Choe Sejin was not one of them.

Choe Sejin was saved from this accusation after more investigation, but this highlights the kind of difficulties he faced due to his social class.

Choe Sejin was chosen as the interpreter reluctantly, but he successfully completed the task and was recognized for his talents.

Choe Sejin is mostly known for his 1527 work, Hunmong Jahoe.

Choe Sejin wanted to promote the usage of hangul through his work Hunmong Jahoe.

Choe Sejin wanted people to use hangul more extensively, and he thought that this would encourage people to take some time to fully learn hangul, before starting to learn Chinese.

Choe Sejin wrote that "it would take [only a single day] to learn Hangul", commenting on the simplicity of hangul, and afterwards, one would be able to learn Chinese on their own without an instructor if one knew hangul and utilized his textbook.

Only the order of these eight characters have been retained until the present and the order of the other characters as proposed by Choe Sejin have been altered.

Choe Sejin ordered them according to sequence in which we open our mouth to articulate these vowels.

Choe Sejin's ordering of the vowels is the order that is currently used in present-day Korea.

The available records of Choe Sejin are very scarce the sole presence of even a minuscule historical record indicates that he was an influential figure in the history of the Korean language.

When his reputation was restored after he served as a translator to the king during a visit by the Chinese envoy, Choe Sejin successfully built his career as a translator, interpreter and linguist.

Choe Sejin's linguistic talent is even recorded in the Jungjong of Joseon Chronicles, which is a chronological record of King Jungjong's historical reigns from 1506 to 1544.

Yoo Soon, a prime minister of the Joseon Dynasty, wrote that Choe Sejin was "the best in the nation when it comes to Chinese writing and pronunciation" and that he was worried that there was no one to succeed him to translate and respond to documents sent from China.

The King wrote about his worries that Choe Sejin might be the only person capable of handling proper relations with China.

Choe Sejin published a lot in the field of linguistics, especially in the realm of Chinese linguistics directed towards a Korean audience.

Choe Sejin translated numerous works such as "Bak Tongsa", Interpreter Park, which was a Chinese textbook, and elaborated on its research through his own work "Sasung Tonghae", Explaining the Four Sounds.

One work that reveals a lot about Choe Sejin's character and his influence during his time is a poem written as a eulogy by one of his friends, Kim Ankook.