although king sejong the great led the development of hangeul to allow literacy to spread among common people and to create a writing system that represented the language more accurately than hanja, it was not adopted by the upper classes of koreans. hanja would continue to be the official writing system until the late 19th century. although it was rejected by the elite classes, hangeul was used often by lower classes as a way to write down korean literature and for lower classes to communicate.