Statue of King Sejong (Gwanghwamun)
The statue of King Sejong was dedicated on 9 October 2009, in a ceremony attended by attended by President Lee Myung-bak and other Korean government official, on a Hangul Day in celebration of the 563rd anniversary of the invention of the Korean alphabet by King Sejong, two months after the Gwanghwamun Plaza opening. The golden statue is 6.2 meters high (another source gives the statue height as 9.5 meters and yet another, 6.7 meters) and weights 20 tons. The king has one hand raised and another placed on a book. Sides of the statue display all of the hangul alphabet characters. In front of the statue there are small models of a celestial globe, a rain gauge, and a sundial, the invention of which is also traditionally attributed to King Sejong in Korea. While King Sejong is best remembered for his invention of hangul, he is also considered to have been involved in promotion of agriculture, literature, science and technology, as well as Confucian philosophy, in Korea.
Gari Ledyard
The "Hunmin Jeong-eum" credits the 古篆字 ""Gu" Seal Script" as being the source King Sejong or his ministers used to create hangul. This has traditionally been interpreted as the "Old" Seal Script, and has confused philologists because hangul bears no functional similarity to the Chinese seal scripts. However, 古 "gǔ" had more than one meaning: besides meaning "old", it could be used to refer to the Mongols (蒙古 "Měng-gǔ"). Records from Sejong's day played with this ambiguity, joking that "no one is more "gu" than the "Meng-gu"". That is, "Gu Seal Script" may have been a veiled reference to the Mongol Seal Script, or Phagspa alphabet. ("Seal script" is a style of writing, used for name seals and official stamps. Phagspa had a seal script variant modeled after the appearance of the Chinese seal script of its day. In this guise it was called the 蒙古篆字 Mongol Seal Script, with only the initial character distinguishing it from the 古篆字 credited by the "Hunmin Jeong-eum" as the source of hangul.) There were many Phagspa manuscripts in the Korean palace library, and several of Sejong's ministers knew the script well.