The Use of Chinese Characters in Ancient Korea: With a Focus on Texts Transcribed with Chinese-Borrowed Characters

The Use of Chinese Characters in Ancient Korea: With a Focus on Texts Transcribed with Chinese-Borrowed Characters

This paper examines the three different systems that were used for writing vernacular Korean with Chinese-borrowed characters in the ancient period of the country: idu, gugyeol, and hyangchal. As opposed to idu and hyangchal, writing systems that have the trait of transcribing, instead of translating, vernacular languages, gugyeol can be characterized as translating Korean vernacular sentences in terms of the meaning of Chinese-borrowed characters. The development of the gugyeol system started from the previous indication of reading order using “to 吐” marks and led to the creation of the symbol-gugyeol system using jeomto marks and the interpretative-reading gugyeol system using to marks, showing similarity to the development process of idu.

This paper examines the three different systems that were used for writing vernacular Korean with Chinese-borrowed characters in the ancient period of the country: idu, gugyeol, and hyangchal. As opposed to idu and hyangchal, writing systems that have the trait of transcribing, instead of translating, vernacular languages, gugyeol can be characterized as translating Korean vernacular sentences in terms of the meaning of Chinese-borrowed characters. The development of the gugyeol system started from the previous indication of reading order using “to 吐” marks and led to the creation of the symbol-gugyeol system using jeomto marks and the interpretative-reading gugyeol system using to marks, showing similarity to the development process of idu.