The Korean language is classified as a Ural-Altaic language, a group that also includes Mongolian,
Hungarian, and Finnish.
The Korean character system, Hangeul, is completely different from Japanese or Chinese.
Hangeul was developed by a group of scholars under the patronage of King Sejong in 1443 during the Joseon Dynasty.
This unique phonetic syllabic system is composed of 10 vowels
and 14 consonants, and allows great freedom of expression. The Hangeul system of Romanization,
which was last revised in July 2000, is based on standard Korean pronunciation and differs substantially
from the previous McCune-Reischauer (M-R) system that had been in use for over 60 years.
