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.
Origin of Hangul
Another letter composed of two elements to represent two regional pronunciations, now obsolete, was ㅱ, which transcribed the Chinese initial 微. This represented either "m" or "w" in various Chinese dialects, and was composed of ㅁ plus ㅇ. In ’Phags-pa, a loop under a letter, ꡧ, represented after vowels, and Ledyard proposes this rather than the null symbol was the source of the loop at the bottom, so that the two components of ㅱ reflected its two pronunciations just as the two components of ㆁ "ng" did. The reason for suspecting that this derives from ’Phags-pa ꡧ "w" is that the entire labio-dental series of both ’Phags-pa and the Korean alphabet6, used to transcribe the Chinese initials 微非敷 "w, v, f," have such composite forms, though in the case of ’Phags-pa these are all based on the letter ꡜ "h" (ꡤ "etc."), while in Hangul, which does not have an "h" among its basic consonants, they are based on the labial series ㅁ "m," ㅂ "b," ㅍ "p."