[Hangul Day 100th Anniversary Four-Part Series – Part 2] Balancing Identity and Flexibility: The Korean Language Society's Fight for Standardization Under Japanese Rule and the Modern Completion of Hangul

In 1926, as pressure on the Korean language and culture intensified under Japanese colonial rule, linguists and visionaries of the Joseon Language Research Society (now the Hangul Society) designated the 29th day of the ninth lunar month as "Gagyanal" and held the first commemoration. The event honored the 480th year since the promulgation of Hunminjeongeum in 1446, and it was a resolute declaration of cultural resistance, vowing to protect national identity through the written language amid Japan's coercive cultural plunder.

"Gagyanal" was renamed "Hangul Day," as it is known today, in 1928, and it served as a central pillar that united the hearts of the people during a dark era. The establishment of Hangul Day was not merely an occasion to honor a legacy of the past. It became the starting point of a large-scale academic and cultural movement to study and systematize the national language scientifically and pass it down intact to future generations.

The scholars regarded Hangul as a vessel containing the soul of the nation. As Japan's policy of turning Koreans into imperial subjects and its campaign to eradicate the Korean language gained force, protecting Hangul was directly tied to protecting the survival of the people. This self-awareness became a powerful ideological foundation for the independent language research and standardization movement that followed.

Beyond Hunminjeongeum to a Modern Language: The 1933 Unified Spelling System and the Standardization of Word Spacing

To evaluate the activities of the Korean Language Society during the colonial period merely as "defending tradition" or "enduring the dark age" is to view the true value of Hangul only in part. The linguists of the time did not leave Hangul as a classical relic, "Hunminjeongeum," confined to old documents. They carried out a groundbreaking systematization so that it could be reborn as a "modern standard language" capable of fully expressing the sophisticated thought and civilization of modern society.

[Source: NY&NJ. Reproduction prohibited] [Source: New York and New Jersey, DB Ban]

The decisive result was the "Unified Proposal for Hangul Spelling," published in 1933. By establishing the morphophonemic principle, which requires words to be written in their original forms, the proposal dramatically improved reading efficiency.

Especially noteworthy is the establishment of the norm of word-by-word spacing. In the early days after Hunminjeongeum was created, and in traditional Chinese-character writing, sentences were written continuously without spaces. To secure readability and precision as a modern language, however, the Korean Language Society introduced word-level spacing as a standard norm. This greatly improved Hangul's readability and expressiveness and became the occasion for a complete transition to a modern written style.

Embracing Global Standards While Protecting What Is One's Own: A Flexible Balance of Horizontal Writing and Loanword Transcription

One of the Korean Language Society's greatest achievements was the "independent flexibility" it showed amid foreign pressure and the tide of global standards. Avoiding both unconditional adherence to tradition and blind rejection of foreign elements, its members flexibly accepted global standards while firmly preserving Hangul's own system.

A representative example is the switch to horizontal writing (left to right, top to bottom). Moving away from the traditional East Asian vertical writing, the society proactively adopted the left-to-right, top-to-bottom horizontal style that had become the Western and global standard, and applied it in book publishing, the press and education. This opened the way for Hangul to adapt fully to modern printing technology and to academic systems built on horizontal writing.

In response to the influx of loanwords, the society also established the "Unified Proposal for Loanword Transcription" in 1941. It created a framework for accepting and transcribing sounds and concepts from outside in a regular manner within Hangul's own phonological system. This strategy of keeping one's roots firmly in place while flexibly embracing changing times and outside standards became a key driver in securing Hangul's competitiveness as a modern language.

The Struggle for Linguistic Independence: The Korean Language Society Incident and the Determined Compilation of the "Great Dictionary of the Korean Language"

The work of systematizing and standardizing Hangul was a succession of fierce struggles that required risking one's life. In the 1930s and 1940s, when Japan abolished Korean-language education in schools and forced Koreans to adopt Japanese names, scholars of the Korean Language Society devoted themselves to compiling the "Great Dictionary of the Korean Language," the nation's first dictionary, by collecting dialects and standard words from across the country.

Viewing this as a thorn in its side, Japan fabricated the "Korean Language Society Incident" in 1942 and arrested en masse key scholars including Yi Geuk-ro, Choe Hyeon-bae and Yi Hui-seung, subjecting them to brutal torture and imprisonment. In the process, precious scholars such as Yi Yun-jae and Han Jing died in prison.

Yet the dictionary manuscripts and spelling system they protected at the cost of their lives became a decisive foundation that allowed Korean society to greet liberation immediately after independence without linguistic confusion and to rebuild its national education system quickly. The struggle of the Korean Language Society is a great legacy showing that protecting a language is protecting the sovereignty of a nation and its people.

An Exquisite Fusion of Tradition and Modernity: Cultural Identity and a Flexible Legacy Proven by Hangul

The path Hangul walked during the colonial period is a unique model of how a traditional heritage can gain modern vitality. Rather than settling for classical symbols, Hangul evolved through bold innovations, namely the introduction of word spacing, the switch to horizontal writing and the establishment of a loanword transcription system, into a sophisticated modern language that stands comparison with any in the world.

Firmly protecting its essence (Hangul's phonological system and identity) amid outside coercion and the tide of globalization, while actively embracing the standards and forms the times demanded to improve its constitution: this flexibility offers insight that remains valid today.

The answer to how we can protect and develop our cultural assets in a rapidly changing digital civilization lies in the flexible decisions made by linguists under Japanese rule. Modern Hangul, perfected through a balance of identity and flexibility, serves as the firm root of the Korean language, which now stands at the center of global culture.