Hangul supremacy
Hangul supremacy is the belief, most widespread in Korea, that the Hangul alphabet developed by King Sejong the Great's Hall of Worthies in 1443 is the simplest, most logical, most beautiful and most scientific of the world's writing systems. In its extreme form, the belief holds that Hangul is in fact best suited for the expression of sounds in all languages.
Origin of Hangul
Of these seven vowel sounds, three could not be iotized (preceded by a "y-" sound). These three were written with a single stroke: ㅡ "ɨ," ㆍ "ʌ," ㅣ "i." (The letter ㆍ "ʌ" is now obsolete except in Jeju dialect.) The "Hunmin Jeong-eum" states that the shapes of the strokes were chosen to represent the Confucian 三才 "sāncái" "three realms" of 天 heaven, a "yang" concept, represented with a dot for the sun, ; 地 earth, a "yin" concept, represented with a flat line, ; and 人 man, represented with an upright line, , who mediates between the two. The other four vowels, which could be iotized, were written as a dot next to a line: yin ㅓ "ə" and yang ㅏ "a" (which alternate under vowel harmony), yin ㅜ "u" and yang ㅗ "o" (which also alternate). Iotation was then indicated by doubling this dot: ㅕ "yə," ㅑ "ya," ㅠ "yu," ㅛ "yo."
There was presumably a third parameter in designing the vowel letters, not mentioned in the "Haerye," namely choosing horizontal ㅡ "ɨ" as the graphic base of "closed" (rounded) ㅜ "u" and ㅗ "o," and vertical ㅣ "i" as the base of "open" (unrounded) ㅓ "ə" and ㅏ "a." The horizontal letters ㅡㅜㅗ "ɨ u o" represented back vowels in the fifteenth century, as they do today, whereas the fifteenth-century sound values of ㅣㅓㅏ "i ə a" are uncertain. Some linguists reconstruct them as , respectively (and reconstruct obsolete ㆍ "ʌ" as ); others as (with ㆍ "ʌ" as ). In the latter case, the vertical letters would have represented front vowels, the dot the sole central vowel, and the vowel harmony, described as "shallow" vs "deep", would have been one of vowel height, with the "yang" vowels lower than their "yin" counterparts.