Twenty-Eight Letters
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
Sejong, the fourth king of Joseon, was the third son of King Taejong (Grand Prince Chungnyeong), but because he loved books and thought deeply, he took the throne in 1418 at the age of twenty-two. He gathered young scholars in the Hall of Worthies (Jiphyeonjeon) to publish books, set down farming methods suited to the land of Joseon in the Nongsa jikseol (Straight Talk on Farming), and, with Jang Yeong-sil, who had been born a slave, built the rain gauge to measure rainfall, the Angbu Ilgu sundial that told the time by the sun’s shadow, and the Jagyeongnu water clock that struck its own bell. But after he turned forty, the king suffered from eye disease and all kinds of illness. And one thing had long weighed on his heart.
Characters
In 1443, aged 47
Mother of eight sons and two daughters
Submitted a memorial against the new letters
Wrote the afterword to the Hunminjeongeum
A young wife who lost her husband
April 1998, Andong, Gyeongsang Province. That day, old graves were being moved to make way for new housing.
When they lifted the lid of one coffin, a folded sheet of paper lay on the chest of the person inside.
A letter that had lain in darkness for more than four hundred years. It was not written in Chinese characters.
The letter began like this — “To Won’s father.”
Those letters had been born 143 years earlier, on a winter night.
The night a king, by lamplight,
studied the shape of his own mouth.
Winter 1443, Gyeongbokgung Palace. Even deep in the night, when everyone was asleep, a light burned late in the king’s chamber.
blocks the throat.
Holding his mouth up to a copper mirror, the king watched where his tongue and lips touched with every sound he made.
What is it you write
so intently every night?
letters to write it down
just as it is heard.
In those days, the people of Joseon spoke their own language but wrote in Chinese characters.
Mastering Chinese characters took years of doing nothing but study. To the common people, who farmed and fished, writing belonged to a faraway land.
If you could not write, then even when you were wronged,
you had no way to set down your story and send it up.
Back in 1432, the king had said this to his officials:
know whether an offense is great or small
and mend their ways?
Laws might be posted outside government offices, but few people could read them.
The king studied the body as it makes sounds.
The initial-sound letters copied the shape of the mouth and tongue as each sound is made.
ㄱ — the root of the tongue blocking the throat
ㄴ — the tip of the tongue touching the upper gums
ㅁ — the shape of the mouth
ㅅ — the shape of a tooth
ㅇ — the shape of the throat
As a sound grew stronger, a stroke was added.
The medial sounds: heaven (·), earth (ㅡ) and humankind (ㅣ).
Combining the three, he made eleven letters.
Twenty-eight letters in all.
The twelfth month of 1443. The Veritable Records of King Sejong recorded:
This month the king himself created the twenty-eight letters of eonmun, the vernacular script.
The letters are simple, yet their transformations are endless.
They were named “Hunminjeongeum.”
The correct sounds to teach the people — Hunminjeongeum.
On the twentieth day of the second month of 1444, seven scholars led by Choe Man-ri, Deputy Director of the Hall of Worthies, submitted a memorial opposing the new letters.
Making a script of our own is what barbarians do,
like the Mongols, Jurchens and Japanese!
It hinders learning
and does nothing for government.
you devote your mind to the vernacular script.
I fear for Your Majesty’s health.
meant to make life easier for the people?!
In the four tones and seven sounds,
how many initials are there?
who will?!
The king had Choe Man-ri and the others locked up at the Uigeumbu, the royal tribunal, and set them all free the next day.
That day, the king also said this:
I am old, and the days are hard to pass;
I only keep books as my companions.
It was not that he loved new things. The king had long been ill, and he knew he did not have much time.
On the twenty-eighth day of the second month of 1444, the king and queen set out together for Chosu-ri in Cheongju. They went to treat the king’s eye disease.
It was a year of bad harvest, so the king kept the procession as small as possible.
The next day, an old man threw himself down before the king’s carriage.
I cannot write,
so I cannot set down
even one page of my plea…
Hear what he has to say.
The Veritable Records of King Sejong record that the king had the old man’s grievance looked into and gave him a bolt of cotton cloth.
The spring water of Chosu-ri stung the tongue like pepper, so it was called “Chosu” (椒水), “pepper water.”
That year the king stayed here twice, in spring and in autumn, for more than a hundred days in all.
They look like child’s play.
and even the slow
within ten days.
to try writing, my queen?
The queen took up the brush. She had never written these letters before.
“Nuneul atgisyosyeo.”
Queen Soheon— Please spare your eyes.
For a long time, the king could not put that paper down.
That winter, their fifth son, Grand Prince Gwangpyeong, died at twenty. In the first month of the next year, their seventh son, Grand Prince Pyeongwon, followed him at nineteen.
Having lost two sons one after the other, the queen fell ill and slowly faded.
On the twenty-fourth day of the third month of 1446, the queen died at the home of her second son, Grand Prince Suyang. She was fifty-two.
The king had lost the one who had shared thirty-eight years with him.
Early in the 9th month of 1446.
The Hunminjeongeum was complete.
Sejong’s prefaceBecause the speech of this country is different from that of China, it does not fit with Chinese characters.
Sejong’s prefaceAnd so many of the simple people, though they have something they want to say, in the end cannot express their thoughts.
Sejong’s prefacePitying this, I have newly made twenty-eight letters.
Sejong’s prefaceI wish only that everyone may learn them with ease and find them convenient for daily use.
Hunminjeongeum — the correct sounds to teach the people
Jeong In-ji, a scholar of the Hall of Worthies, wrote this at the end of the book:
and even the foolish within ten days.
a rooster’s crow, a dog’s bark —
all of it can be written down.
1447. The king had his second son, Grand Prince Suyang, write a book in the new letters to pray for the queen’s soul — the Seokbo sangjeol.
And after reading that book, the king composed songs himself.
One moon shines on a thousand rivers.
The king’s songs were called the Worin cheongang jigok — Songs of the Moon Shining on a Thousand Rivers.
It meant that the Buddha’s teaching shines evenly on the whole world, like moonlight.
These were among the earliest songs written in the new letters.
On the palace pond, on the Han River, on the stream outside a nameless village —
The moonlight settled on them all alike.
Three years later, in the second month of 1450, the king died. He was fifty-four.
The king was laid to rest beside his queen, in one tomb.
136 years later.
In 1586, Yi Eung-tae of Andong died at the age of thirty-one. He left behind a little son, Won, and a wife who was carrying their child.
Before burying her husband, the wife wrote him a letter — in the letters the king had made.
To Won’s father.
Letter from Won’s motherYou always said to me, didn’t you — let us live till our hair turns white, and then die together.
Letter from Won’s motherThen how could you leave me behind and go first?
Letter from Won’s motherWho are little Won and I to lean on, and how are we to live, that you would leave it all and go?
Letter from Won’s motherWhen the child in my womb is born, whom will you have it call father?
Letter from Won’s motherRead this letter, then come into my dreams and tell me everything. I want so much to hear it.
Letter from Won’s motherThere is no end to what I want to say, but the paper has run out, so I will stop here.
Beside the letter lay a pair of mituri, hemp sandals. They had been woven from hemp bark mixed with the wife’s own hair.
She had woven them praying that he would get well, but her husband never got to wear them.
April 24, 1998. For the first time in 412 years, light entered the tomb. Until that day, the letter had lain on her husband’s chest.
Saying that “the simple people, though they have something they want to say, in the end cannot express their thoughts,” the king made the twenty-eight letters.
For more than four hundred years, those letters kept safe
what one person, in the end, had wanted to say.
The letters this story was first written in were born on that winter night, too.
