On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 01:22:25PM -0800, Philip Hart wrote: > Korean is held up as an example of the way to establish a > sensible writing system instead of evolving a mishmash like > most languages. IIRC King So-and-so got a committee together, > came up with something logical and simple, and imposed it. I have a friend who married a Korean. His explanation is that the Japanese did a VERY thorough job of destroying all evidence of the Korean written language while they controlled the country for some number of years. Their intent was to wipe out the language except as something spoken by the lowest peasantry, and destroy the native cultural heritage completely. They were moderately successful. After they were kicked out, there was not enough written word in Korean available to recreate the original alphabet - so they created a new one from scratch. They had the advantage of not having an original alphabet / writing system to displace. -- Scott Raun sraun at fireopal.org