Hangul Day

What it honours

Hangul is the alphabet Korean is written in, and the day exists to mark its making and its first appearance in print. The text that introduced it, the Hunminjeongeum, came out in the ninth month of 1446, with a companion commentary called the Hunminjeongeum Haerye. Older still is a court record from the twelfth month of 1443, in the Veritable Records of Sejong, noting that the new alphabet had been announced. No exact day survives. The scholar Gari Ledyard has argued it was probably shown some time before that recorded date, not on it.

How it began

The body behind the holiday grew out of a society founded in 1908 to study, improve and spread Korean and its alphabet. Japan took over Korea in 1910, and the group carried on through colonial rule. On 1 February 1924 it held the first modern ceremony for the alphabet, timed to a lunisolar anniversary of its announcement. Two years later the society launched the yearly holiday, choosing the last day of the ninth month in the Korean calendar because the Haerye had not yet been found, which left them unaware that publication fell in the first ten days of that month. The earliest name was Kagyanal, taken from the first two letters in the charts used to teach children to read.

The date moves

Fixing a day proved awkward. At the 1930 ceremony the society agreed to drop the Korean calendar and use 28 October by the Gregorian reckoning. The next year it fell on 29 October, apparently because of confusion over converting the old date and which calendar to use, and by 1934 it was back on 28 October. Nothing official was held from 1937 to 1944, as the colonial government tightened its control during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and from October 1942 many society members were imprisoned. The Haerye turned up again in 1940, and once Korea was free in 1945 the date moved to 9 October, where it has stayed.

Two Koreas and beyond

In 1946 the American military government in the south named Hangul Day a national holiday. That year also fell on the 500th anniversary of the alphabet's publication, and about 20,000 people came to a ceremony outside Deoksugung palace in Seoul. South Korea gave the day public holiday standing in 1949, took it away in 1990 to reduce annual rest days, restored it as a national holiday in 2005, and made it a public holiday once more in 2012. North Korea keeps 15 January, seemingly for the 1443 announcement, though the reason for that date is not known. China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture declared 2 September its Day of the Korean Language in 2014.

How Hangul Day is kept

Ceremonies carry the day, and their organisers have changed over the years. In the South the Korean Language Society ran the chief events until about 1980, joined from 1956 by the King Sejong the Great Memorial Society. The Seoul city government then took over, and from 1982 the national government hosted instead. The earliest gathering, in 1926, ran four hours into the evening at a restaurant, Siktowŏn, where around 400 people heard talks and lectures on the script; discussion continued over the following days, and newspapers covered it closely. Larger anniversaries have brought crowds to Deoksugung palace.

When and where

South Korea keeps the day on 9 October, a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar. That timing was settled in 1945 to match the last of the first ten days of the ninth month of 1446, when the Hunminjeongeum was published. North Korea holds its version on 15 January, seemingly for the 1443 announcement, though why that date was chosen is not recorded.

It is a public holiday in South Korea and an official observance in North Korea. South Korean ceremonies have centred on Seoul, from the restaurant Siktowŏn in 1926 to Deoksugung palace in 1946, with the city government and then the national government hosting. Outside the peninsula, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China keeps a related Day of the Korean Language.

What Hangul Day means

The day treats the alphabet as something a people owns. The society that created the holiday worked while Korea was under colonial rule, and its members argued over what to call the script, Hangul or Chŏngum, which shows how much the naming carried. Setting a date for the alphabet's first appearance, and hunting down the lost Haerye commentary in 1940, were treated as work worth doing carefully. Even the uncertainty is part of it: the day marks a beginning whose exact day is not known, and it holds that the script matters anyway.

Hangul Day dates: 2026, 2027, 2028

Questions people ask about Hangul Day

See also

Water lanternSmall lamps floated on water to honour the dead and ask for good fortuneMid-Autumn FestivalAn annual harvest festival celebrating family reunions, full moons and mooncakesBuddha's BirthdayA festival marking the birth of Siddhartha Gautama, observed across Asia with temple rituals and community gatherings.SabantuyA summer festival of folk sports and feasting celebrated by Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash, and Kazakh communities.

Good reading and sources

• Hangul Day on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.