South Korea Hangul Day – October 9, 2026

History of South Korea Hangul Day

Since its first inception in 1926, the date of Hangul Day has varied. In 1945, the South Korean government declared October 9 as Hangul Day, an annual legal holiday, and since October 9, 1970, Hangul Day has been an annual national holiday in South Korea. However, between 1991 and 2012, Hangul Day’s status as a holiday was canceled due to the South Korean government being pressured by major employers to increase the country’s annual number of workdays. As a result, the day remained as a commemoration but workers didn’t get the day off. On November 1, 2012, its status as a national day was restored.

Before Hangul was invented, Koreans used Chinese characters to write with native phonetic writing systems. In addition to a large number of characters to be learned, the grammatical differences between Korean and Chinese languages also became difficult for Koreans to write using Chinese characters. As a result, only those who had the privilege of education were literate. Therefore, King Sejong decided to create the Korean alphabet to promote literacy among all Koreans, and he proclaimed the publication of Hangul in 1446.

Despite all the benefits of Hangul, it almost went out of existence during the Choson dynasty. At the time, the elites who desired to preserve their status saw that Chinese characters were the only true way to write Korean. Hangul was then effectively banned by King Yeonsangun in the early 16th Century but then saw a revival towards the end of the century. It then had a resurgence in the 19th Century, and gradually grew more common, especially due to its role in Korean nationalism during the era of the Japanese occupation. In the 1970s, there was a decline in the use of Chinese characters, paving the way for the prevalent utilization of Hangul in almost all Korean writings today.