Hangul was invented In 1446, King Sejong published this Korean letter as Hunmin chong-um. The book which is also named as Hunmin chong-um includes the reason for the invention, the aim and the date when it was published. But the stubborn ministers were against the using of Hangul because they thought that Han-ja(Chinese letters) is the best which they had been using for thousands of years. Thereafter for about 400 years Hunmin chong-um had been ill-treated by nobilities but then it became popular among common people in literature. In the early days of the 20th century, as the invasion of the Japanese took place for 36 years, Japanese forbade Koreans from neither writing and reading Hangul nor speaking Korean language but the Chosun Linguistics Association and the Independece Movement did their best in order to keep Hangul. Also during those days Hangul specialist 'Ju Shi Kyung' used the name 'Hangul' for the first time. The name Hangul was gradually spread and after the independence of Korea, Hangul has been confirmed as the Korean alphabet. In 1997, Korean language has been chosen for the American Standard Aptitude Test, S.A.T's optional foreign language subject and the Korean proficiency test has been taken in various countries such as Japan, China, Kazahastan, Uzbekistan.
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