Why is the Korean Water Source Gymnasium written in Chinese characters?

"For half a century, due to the wrong writing policy of Special Korean, today we are caught in a cultural crisis more critical than the economic crisis in the 1990s." "Korea should not regard Chinese characters as a foreign language; Chinese characters and Korean should be used as "national characters" to implement education. " In view of the huge cultural crisis caused by the lack of Chinese characters, the living prime ministers of South Korea recently jointly signed a proposal asking the South Korean Presidential Palace to urge the implementation of formal Chinese character education in primary schools in South Korea. The proposal has been submitted to Cheongwadae.

The relationship between Chinese characters and Korean culture and history is almost natural. However, due to various reasons, South Korea, which used Chinese characters 17800, began to "de-characterize Chinese characters" from 1968, forcibly abolishing Chinese characters used in Korean textbooks for primary and secondary schools, and eventually people aged 20 to 40 in South Korea hardly knew Chinese characters. These people are also known as the "phonetic generation" in Korea.

A few years ago, the Korean government began to revise the policy of completely abolishing the use of Chinese characters and decided to resume Chinese character education in junior and senior high schools, but this policy did not involve primary schools.

In response to the cultural crisis in South Korea caused by the lack of Chinese characters, 20 of the 2/kloc-0 living prime ministers in South Korea recently signed a proposal to urge the implementation of Chinese character education and submitted it to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Most of the previous prime ministers signed in Chinese characters.

Twenty consecutive prime ministers signed the proposal, while South Korea has 2 1 living prime ministers. The only one who didn't sign is Liu (the 5th Prime Minister of Korea/kloc-0), consultant of the National Federation for the Promotion of Chinese Character Education in Korea, who is currently ill in bed. In a sense, this proposal represents the opinions of all the living prime ministers in South Korea.

Morning Post reporter saw on the website of Korea National Association for the Promotion of Chinese Character Education yesterday that the signers included earlier former South Korean Prime Ministers Kim Jong-mi (1 1 and 3 1), Lu Xinyong (18), (20th), Lu (22nd) and Zheng.

It is worth noting that most prime ministers have signed Chinese characters, including Lu Xinyong, Zheng, Li and so on. The importance of Chinese characters is reflected by practical actions. The Chinese character signatures written by these prime ministers all show a certain calligraphy skill and China cultural accomplishment. Only Lee Hoi chang, Park Tae-jun and others signed in Korean.

It is said that Chen Tai Xia, chairman of the Korean Chinese Character Education Promotion Association, spent more than a year running around and finally persuaded these prime ministers. Lee Hae Chan, Han Mingshu and Han all served as prime ministers during Roh Moo-hyun's administration, and Chen Taixia was "quite surprised". Chosun Ilbo believes that this shows that it has nothing to do with ideas and political positions. In Korea, everyone deeply understands the importance of Chinese character education.

South Korea can't live without China's "Chinese characters"

Regardless of history, geography or consanguinity, the Korean Peninsula has a natural connection with the Chinese nation-in fact, South Korea and Koreans have always prided themselves on being "Little China" in history. Since a large number of Han immigrants moved to the Korean peninsula in the Han Dynasty and introduced China culture, Chinese characters have been the official script of the Korean peninsula. Until the end of 19, Proverbs (Korean) was still regarded as a second-rate script, and official documents must be written in Chinese characters.

1968, South Korean President park chung-hee banned the use of Chinese characters in official documents and forcibly abolished Chinese characters used in Korean primary and secondary school textbooks. Until a few years ago, the Korean government began to revise the policy of completely abolishing the use of Chinese characters. In 2005, the South Korean government announced that it would fully resume the use of Chinese characters and Chinese characters signs that have disappeared for many years in all fields, such as official documents and traffic signs.

This proposal, signed by successive prime ministers, focuses on Chinese character education for primary school students. These prime ministers who are worried about Korean culture and history reflect: "For half a century, due to the wrong writing policy of Special Korean, today we are caught in a cultural crisis more critical than the economic crisis in the 1990s."

They think that "Korean young people can't read many history books in libraries all over Korea because they don't know Chinese characters." "More than 70% of Han Wenzhong's daily language comes from Chinese. If you don't understand Chinese characters, you can't really understand the meaning of these Korean characters. " "In order to fundamentally solve this problem, in the process of formal education in primary schools, students should be allowed to learn Chinese characters in stages. Chinese characters should not be regarded as foreign languages, but should be educated as national characters (national characters) together with Korean to facilitate the normalization of Putonghua life. "

In recent years, with the increasingly close economic and cultural exchanges between China and South Korea, the proportion of Korean young people learning Chinese characters and Chinese has greatly increased compared with the past. Some large Korean enterprises, such as Samsung Group and Hyundai Heavy Industry, also have certain requirements for the Chinese language ability of new employees when recruiting. However, due to the failure to start from the basics, the ability of Koreans to learn Chinese characters and Chinese still has a big problem compared with other areas in the Chinese character cultural circle.

Reporter's notes

Cultural self-confidence is inseparable from Chinese characters.

Gu Huawei

Since the Opium War, the fate of Chinese characters in Korea is almost full of ups and downs.

"Chinese characters" has always been a sensitive topic in Korea. For some time, the preservation or abolition of Chinese characters has almost become one of the symbols of Korean patriotism. Behind the controversy of Chinese characters, people always see an extreme nationalist agitation-however, this is not a normal attitude towards culture and history.

There is a simple reason. The root of a nation lies in its language and writing: Korean is greatly influenced by Chinese, and its official writing has been Chinese characters since it was recorded in writing-King Sejong of the Li Dynasty created proverbs (later called Korean) for the Korean people to learn. Even so, Chinese characters are still the mainstream writing tool on the Korean peninsula. As Cui Wanli of the Li Dynasty said when he opposed Sejong's advocacy of proverbs: "Although Kyushu has different customs since ancient times, there is no difference due to dialects." At that time, the mainstream opinion was that the Korean nation had always admired and followed Chinese culture, and of course it had to use Chinese characters completely, which was tantamount to deviating from the excellent Chinese culture and self-indulgence. The upper class in North Korea later called it "proverbs", which means it is a kind of folk writing similar to "proverbs".

After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, with the fiasco of China, the Li Dynasty carried out a reform called "Changing Zhang in the Sino-Japanese War", and its official documents were changed from only using Chinese characters to combining Chinese characters with proverbs. 19 10, Korea became a Japanese colony. Since then, Japan has confiscated and burned a large number of proverbs and books on the Korean peninsula, and at the same time cancelled Korean teaching in middle school courses, forcing the full adoption of Japanese school courses. Japan's repression has aroused a stronger national consciousness on the Korean peninsula, and the once neglected "proverbs" have been vigorously advocated and popularized. At that time, the use of "proverbs" became a symbol of nationalism and was regarded as a symbol of anti-Japanese patriotism-this is understandable in a specific historical period, but the extreme national sentiment has also fermented and gone to extremes, which is incomprehensible.

After the Korean peninsula got rid of Japanese colonial rule, ideographic scholars suggested that all patriots should use ideographic characters. After 1968, South Korean President park chung-hee ordered the full implementation of Korean-specific teaching, banned Chinese character education in primary schools, and only allowed to teach basic Chinese characters of about 900 words in junior and senior high schools. Until contact with China, South Korea's current education policy gradually increased some provisions on the education of Chinese characters. However, Chinese characters are only optional subjects in junior high schools, not compulsory subjects, which led to the fact that few Korean students really studied Chinese characters with their heart, and Chinese characters were gradually marginalized in South Korea.

As a result, due to the lack of Chinese character education, the younger generation of Koreans do not know much about the roots of their own nation, because the first threshold to truly understand Korean cultural traditions is Chinese characters-almost all Korean history books are written in Chinese characters. The cultural relics with a history of more than 100 years that the reporter saw in the National Central Museum of Korea, whether it is exquisite calligraphy, painting, porcelain or stone tablets, all use Chinese characters.

However, in the eyes of young Korean children, many Chinese characters that have been integrated into the daily life of Koreans are tantamount to "heavenly books." In fact, not only written Chinese characters, but also 70% of the more than 500,000 Korean words are Chinese characters, and 95% of the special terms in the fields of medicine, philosophy and law come from Chinese characters. If you can't understand Chinese characters accurately, it's hard to really understand Korean.

Many idioms and sayings of China are often quoted in South Korea, such as "A threesome must have a teacher", "My humble abode" and "A thousand words are worth reading". If such idioms are written in Korean in pinyin form, it is difficult to understand, while if they are written in Chinese characters, many people have no idea at all. The problem of homonyms in Korean, if you don't recognize Chinese characters, it will also cause great obstacles to understanding. Because there is a huge gap between the young Koreans known as the "Pinyin Generation" and the cultural circle of Chinese characters-some experts simply say that the generation of Koreans who don't know Chinese characters is suffering from "knowledge anemia" that they should know but don't know. ...

All this, of course, is a huge cultural crisis!

Not long ago, Mao Zedong's calligraphy work "Qin Yuan Chun Xue" appeared on the screen behind the chair of Emperor Yang Di with the lens of a large Korean historical drama "Yuan Gai Su Wen". It is no accident that such a huge joke is produced.

Of course, in Korea, there is no necessary equal sign between patriotism and the use of Chinese characters.

It is also in recognition of this huge cultural crisis that 20 surviving prime ministers in South Korea finally signed a proposal to promote Chinese character education in primary schools. If this proposal is really adopted by Cheongwadae, it can be considered as a key measure for Koreans to truly "root out the root causes" of their culture.

As a Korean scholar said, in South Korea, not knowing Chinese characters is not a patriotic act, let alone something to be proud of. It is imperative for South Korea to establish cultural self-confidence by starting with Chinese characters.