I'm so proud of Hangeul!

1. Linguistic Perspective: "The Most Perfect System of Writing"
Linguists around the world are full of admiration for the structural perfection of Hangeul.
Geoffrey Sampson, a British linguist, highly praised Hangeul by classifying it as a "featural alphabet."
Hangeul goes beyond simply representing sounds with symbols; it is the only writing system in the world where the shapes of the letters themselves mimic the speech organs—such as the tongue, lips, teeth, and throat—used to make those sounds.
James McCawley, an American linguist, was such an enthusiast of Hangeul that he held a party with his colleagues every year on October 9th to celebrate Hangeul Day.
He highly evaluated the advanced scientific nature and rationality found in the structure of Hangeul.

2. Practical Perspective: "The Best Alphabet Every Language Dreams Of"
Pearl S. Buck, a Nobel laureate in literature, described Hangeul as "the simplest and most sophisticated writing system in the entire world." This aligns perfectly with the passage from the Hunminjeongeum Haerye, which states, "A wise person can learn it before the morning is over, and even an unwise person can learn it within ten days."
With the widespread use of computers and smartphones, the value of Hangeul is shining even brighter. Thanks to its systematic rules and the syllabic block system—where consonants and vowels combine to form a single letter—Hangeul is recognized as the fastest language for typing and the most adaptable to future IT technologies, such as voice recognition.

3. Global Organizations and Historical Evaluation
UNESCO recognized the Hunminjeongeum Haerye by registering it in the Memory of the World Register in 1997.
Furthermore, they established the "UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize," awarded to individuals or organizations that contribute to eliminating illiteracy worldwide, to honor King Sejong’s love for his people on a global scale.
Werner Sasse, a German linguist, remarked, "King Sejong understood the concept of phonemes and implemented them into a writing system 500 years ahead of the West. Hangeul is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of humankind."
÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷
Although Hangeul is a highly original writing system, historical records and academic research well document that King Sejong deeply studied and referenced other existing scripts of the time when creating it.

In the preface of the Hunminjeongeum Haeryebon (The Explanatory Edition) in the Annals of King Sejong and Jeong In-ji's preface, the following record appears: "In the winter of the Year of Gyehae, Our Highness created the 28 characters of the Correct Sounds... The characters were modeled after the ancient seal script (古篆)."
The major scripts that influenced the creation of Hangeul or were referenced by King Sejong at the time are as follows.

1. Phags-pa Script
This is a phonetic script widely used in East Asia at the time, created by Phags-pa, who was the State Preceptor of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.

• Influences and Similarities: The Phags-pa script has a structure where consonants and vowels combine to form a single syllable unit.
There is also an academic theory that the shapes of some letters (e.g., ㄱ, ㅂ, ㄹ) resemble the stylistic features of the Phags-pa script.

• Differences: While the Phags-pa script is closer to a modification of a pre-existing script (the Tibetan script), Hangeul is fundamentally different in that it is the world's only "featural alphabet," designed to mimic the shapes of the vocal organs.

2. Ancient Chinese Seal Script and Phonology
"Gojeon (古篆)" in the phrase "modeled after the ancient seal script" from the Hunminjeongeum preface refers to the ancient seal script style of Chinese characters.

• Influences and Similarities: The way the strokes are drawn in Hangeul and its structure of assembling characters within a square frame (the block shape) referenced the structural aesthetics most familiar to intellectuals of that time.
Furthermore, King Sejong deeply researched Chinese phonology—the study of speech sounds—and established a scientific analytical framework that divided a syllable into the initial sound (Choseong), medial sound (Jungseong), and final sound (Jongseong).

3. Sanskrit and the Siddham Script
In the process of translating Buddhist books in the early Joseon Dynasty, the Siddham script, which is the writing system for Sanskrit originating from India, was also referenced.

• Influences and Similarities: Sanskrit is a thorough phonetic script where consonants and vowels are completely separated.
King Sejong and the scholars of the Jiphyeonjeon had a deep understanding of the consonant arrangement system of Sanskrit (classification by place of articulation, such as velar, alveolar, bilabial, dental, and glottal sounds), which served as a major foundation for establishing the consonant classification system of Hunminjeongeum.

Summary: Creative Reinterpretation Beyond Imitation
King Sejong extensively embraced a wide range of phonetic scripts and phonological knowledge from neighboring countries.
However, Hangeul is not a simple copy of other characters.
Designing consonants to mimic the shapes of the vocal organs that produce sound, and designing vowels to represent the fundamental elements of the universe—the Sky (·), the Earth (ㅡ), and Humanity (ㅣ)—was an uniquely original idea found nowhere else in human history.
In other words, Hangeul can be viewed as an "original creation" made by mobilizing all the cutting-edge linguistic knowledge of the time to complement the shortcomings and maximize the strengths of existing scripts.