Hangul is the writing system created for the Korean language under King Sejong. It was promulgated in 1443 and officially announced in 1446 in a document called the Hunminjeongeum.
The system was designed to make reading and writing more accessible than the Chinese characters then used by Korea’s educated elite. Its letters represent features of speech sounds, and consonant shapes were designed with reference to the position of the speech organs. Hangul letters are grouped into compact syllable blocks rather than written in a simple horizontal string.
The system was originally called Hunminjeongeum, meaning “the correct sounds for the instruction of the people.” The modern term Hangul became common later. Kanji and hiragana belong to Japanese writing, while Cyrillic is used by several languages including Russian; none is Korea’s native alphabetic system.