Hangeul Design: Prototypes and Future of the Korean Alphabet

This year marks the 620^th anniversary of King Sejong’s birth who invented our script Hangeul. King Sejong took pity on the people who were not able to communicate their thoughts because of illiteracy. Out of such love for the people he developed a new script which was easy and efficient to use.

National Hangeul Museum plans to hold overseas exhibitions each year in order to promote values of Hangeul culture, and these exhibitions, in turn, will be presented to the national audience later on. As the first step, the exhibition titled ‘Hangeul Design: Prototypes and Future of the Korean Alphabet’ opened in 2016 at Korean Cultural Center in Tokyo. The current exhibition is the first of the same title touring in Korea. The exhibition consists of ‘Part 1: Easily Learned and Conveniently Used’ and ‘Part 2: Limitlessly Altered’. The exhibition explains the principles of creating 28 letters, by combining simple shapes based on primary forms such as dots, lines, and circles, along with 8 basic letters. In this exhibition, the forms of original Hangeul letters of the 15th century contained in the Hunminjeongeum are reinterpreted into 30 different design works.

We hope the exhibition will provide an opportunity to appreciate different characteristics of the original forms of Hangeul and its unlimited potentials found in various fields in our daily lives.

Easily Learned and Conveniently Used: Letters of Consideration and Communication
King Sejong (in reign from 1418 to 1450), the 4th King of the Joseon dynasty, devised Hangeul in 1443 for ‘the people who could not express themselves fully even if they had something to say’. Hangeul, which can easily be learned and conveniently used, has simple shapes and is comprised of a few letters suiting the purpose of its invention. Eight principle letters using basic shapes of ‘dots, lines and circles’, and their variations in 28 letters can be learned in one morning by ‘a quick-witted person and 10 days even for a slow-witted person’. They are letters of consideration and communication. Limitlessly Altered: Expandability of Hangeul Reinterpreted Through Design
For about 570 years since its invention, Hangeul has been a foundation of Korean culture and evolving continually in places closest to our everyday lives. Especially today, along with linguistic content that Hangeul possesses the modern design field is growing bigger where designers focus on the artistic and visual aspects of Hangeul.

In this exhibition, 22 teams of designers project their design perspectives on Hangeul in the present and also in the Hunminjeongeum of the 15^th century. Expandability of Hangeul exceeding the boundary of a script can be experienced through the design works reinterpreting the 15^th century Hangeul and the Hunminjeongeum.