The Korean Language

Korean is spoken by around 78 million people worldwide, the vast majority of which live in South Korea (Republic of Korea) and North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea). Korean is the national language of both countries. Nearly 2 million Korean speakers also live in China and additional groups of speakers can be found in Japan and the United States.1

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, little is known about Korean before the 15th Century. Linguists do however have a good understanding of the language starting with Middle Korean, whose formation coincides with the invention of the Korean script in 1444.2 In addition, there is some mystery surrounding Korean's relationship to other world languages. The general hypothesis seems to be that Korean is a descendent of the Altaic group of languages which include Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus. However, there is also evidence that Korean is related to Japanese, since it shares many of that language's grammatical traits.

Korean has borrowed extensively from Chinese. According to Wikipedia.com, over half of the Korean vocabulary comes from Chinese (referred to as the Hanja in the Korean writing system).3 Korean has also borrowed words from languages such as Mongolian and Sanskrit, and most recently from German and English

The standard spoken language in South Korea is called Pyojuneo or Pyojunmal and is based on the dialect spoken in and around the capital city of Seoul. North Korea's standard spoken language is likewise based on the dialect spoken in and around its capital Pyongyang

Below are some brief but important facts about the country of South Korea and its people.

Capital: Seoul
Currency: South Korean won
Government Type: Republic
Population: 48,598,175 (July 2004 est.)
Internet Country Code: .kr
Internet Hosts: 694,206 (2001)
Internet Users: 29.22 million (2003)

For additional demographic information on the countries listed here, you can check out the following link:
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ks.html

For information on The Korean Writing System, please see our Quick Facts Library.