KOREA FOCUS

Domestic academia`s effort to globalize Hangeul has achieved its first major achievement with the decision of an Indonesian minority tribe to adopt the Korean script as its official writing system. 

According to the Hunminjeongeum Research Institute and related scholars, the city of Bau-Bau on Buton Island in Sulawesi, Indonesia, has decided to adopt Hangeul as the official writing system for the native language, Cia-Cia. 

On July 21 the city distributed Cia-Cia language textbooks written in Hangeul to 40 primary school students in the Sorawolio district, and lessons are now being conducted four hours a week. The textbook covers the Cia-Cia language, the history and society of Buton Island, and local tales and legends as well as a Korean folk tale.

A minority of 60,000 people, the Cia-Cia tribe has its own language but no writing system. That obstructed learning in the mother tongue and put the language in danger of extinction.

Learning of this, scholars from the Hunminjeongeum Research Institute visited the city of Bau-Bau and suggested the adoption of Hangeul. A memorandum of understanding regarding transmission of the Korean writing system was signed in July last year, resulting in the production of a textbook toward that end.

The city of Bau-Bau will begin constructing a Korea center in the Sorawolio district this September and plans to educate teachers about the Korean language and writing system in order to spread Hangeul to other districts.

Plans have been made to put both the Roman alphabet and Hangeul on road signs in the area and publish history books and folk tales written in Hangeul.

Korean scholars had previously tried unofficially to spread Hangeul to minority groups in Heilongjiang Province in China, Thailand and Nepal, but without success. 

In this regard, Professor Lee Ho-yeong, linguistics professor at Seoul National University who spearheaded the textbook project, said, “Hangeul can help peoples without their own writing system to preserve their own identity and culture. If such peoples are left without a proper education system most of their native languages will become extinct within the next 100 years.”

The decision by Bau-Bau to adopt Hangeul has been welcomed by scholars, related organizations, civic groups and netizens as an important first step in the globalization of Korean. It is anticipated that other peoples without their own writing systems will also use Hangeul as a way to protect their languages and cultures.

“Meaningful progress has been made in the move to globalize Hangeul,” said Chang Gyeong-hui, head of the Association for Korean Linguistics. “This first adoption of Hangeul as the official writing system of another people has laid the cornerstone for further spread of Hangeul around the world.”