Korean

Korean may refer to:

People and culture

Places

See also

Hanja

Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters (hànzì). More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation. Hanja-mal or hanja-eo refers to words that can be written with hanja, and hanmun (한문, 漢文) refers to Classical Chinese writing, although "hanja" is sometimes used loosely to encompass these other concepts. Because hanja never underwent major reform, they are almost entirely identical to traditional Chinese and kyūjitai characters. Only a small number of hanja characters are modified or unique to Korean. By contrast, many of the Chinese characters currently in use in Japan and Mainland China have been simplified, and contain fewer strokes than the corresponding hanja characters.

Although a phonetic Korean alphabet, now known as hangul, had been created by a team of scholars commissioned in the 1440s by King Sejong the Great, it did not come into widespread use until the late 19th and early 20th century. Thus, until that time it was necessary to be fluent in reading and writing hanja in order to be literate in Korean, as the vast majority of Korean literature and most other Korean documents were written in hanja. Today, a good working knowledge of Chinese characters is still important for anyone who wishes to study older texts (up to about the 1990s), or anyone who wishes to read scholarly texts in the humanities. Learning a certain number of hanja is very helpful to understanding the etymology of Sino-Korean words, and to enlarging one's Korean vocabulary. Hanja are not used to write native Korean words, which are always rendered in hangul, and even words of Chinese origin—hanja-eo (한자어, 漢字語)—are written with the hangul alphabet most of the time.

Korean drama

Korean drama (Hangul: 한국드라마; RR: hanguk deurama) or K-drama refers to televised dramas in the Korean language, made in South Korea, mostly in a miniseries format, with distinctive features that set it apart from regular Western television series or soap operas. Korean dramas can be set in contemporary times or in historical settings, the Korean word for the latter being sageuk (사극). Different genres apply to these two types, from romantic comedies and action series to fusion science fiction dramas.

South Korea started to broadcast television series in the 1960s. Today's mini deurama format of 12–24 episodes started in the 1990s, transforming traditional historical series to this format and creating the notion of "fusion sageuks". Korean dramas are usually shot within a very tight schedule, often a few hours before actual broadcast. Screenplays are flexible and may change anytime during production, depending on viewers' feedback, putting actors in a difficult position. Production companies often face financial issues.

Chinese characters

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese they are called Hanzi (simplified Chinese: 汉字; traditional Chinese: 漢字). They have been adapted to write a number of other languages including: Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja, and Vietnamese in a system known as chữ Nôm. Collectively, they are known as CJKV characters. In English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world. By virtue of their widespread current use in East Asia, and historic use throughout the Sinosphere, Chinese characters are among the most widely adopted writing systems in the world.

Sino-Korean vocabulary

Sino-Korean or Hanja-eo (Korean: 한자어, Hanja: 漢字語) refers to the set of words in the Korean language vocabulary that originated from or were influenced by hanja. The Sino-Korean lexicon consists of both words loaned from Chinese and words coined in the Korean language using hanja.

Sino-Korean words are one of the three main types of vocabulary in Korean. The other two are native Korean words and foreign words imported from other languages, mostly from English.

Sino-Korean words today make up about 60% of the Korean vocabulary, though in actual speech (especially informally) native words are more common.

Origins

Sino-Korean words are derived mainly from literary Chinese, and many from modern Sino-Japanese.

Some Sino-Korean words derive from Japanese kun'yomi words, that is, native Japanese words written in Chinese characters. When borrowed into Korean, the characters are given Sino-Korean pronunciations. (Note that in Japanese, these words are not considered to belong to the Sino-Japanese part of the vocabulary as they are native Japanese words.)