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
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.