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 The Korean language is classified
as a Ural-Altaic language, a group which also includes Mongolian,
Hungarian, and Finnish.
The Korean character system, "han-gul", is completely
different from and independent of Chinese and Japanese. 'Han-gul'
was developed by a group of scholars under the patronage of King
Sejong in 1443. It is composed of 10 vowels and 14 consonants. This
unique phonetic alphabet is well-known for its scientific syllabic
system that allows great freedom of expression. The chart below
presents the 24 han-gul letters and their romanized equivalents.
This romanization system is based closely on the McCune-Reischauer(M-R)
system and followed in this publication. M-R romanization differs
substantially from that of English and may take a little while to
get used to. (There are some vowel and consonant sounds that English
does not have.)
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