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Korea: Hangul script: A page from the Hunmin Jeongeum Eonhae, a partial translation of Hunmin Jeongeum, the original promulgation of Hangul

Korea: Hangul script: A page from the Hunmin Jeongeum Eonhae, a partial translation of Hunmin Jeongeum, the original promulgation of Hangul

Hangul is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logographic Hanja and phonetic systems. It was created in the mid-15th century, and is now the official script of both North Korea and South Korea, being co-official in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Jilin Province, People's Republic of China. Hangul is a phonemic alphabet organized into syllabic blocks. Each block consists of at least two of the 24 Hangul letters (jamo), with at least one each of the 14 consonants and 10 vowels. These syllabic blocks can be written horizontally from left to right as well as vertically from top to bottom in columns from right to left.

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