Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

maintains that this culture could be better conveyed through translations,
Instead of wasting resources in a gratuitous and futile attempt to teach
all school children enough characters to read the classics, why not train
a mqll group of specialists to translate these wrks for everyone's benefit
(1974a:70). & makes the interesting point that Christianity, despite
the recentness of its introduction, gained more favor among the comnon
people than Confucianism, because the Bible was translated into all-hangul
which everyone understood. Grant that current all-hangul translations
of classic Korean texts contain sane errors, But this is hardly an
indictment of the enterprise. If experts have trouble, how can school
children be expected to understand them in the original (Ch 'oe, 1 970: 1 57) ?
There are Koreans, in Ch'oe 's view, who cannot shake their belief that
a education per se means learning Chinese characters ( 1 970 : 1 40 ) . They argue,
moreover, that primary school children can easily learn two thousand
characters, since their minds are still .so receptive. Ch'oe sees this
as a compelling reason - not to waste this opportunity mrizing symbols.
Time spent teaching characters is time lost from substantial studies,
Worse, it reduces education to a mechanical'level. Instead of training
people to think, the character-based curriculum fosters cramming, and a
predisposition to respond by rote to new situations (1970:87).
If the worst effects of Chinese characters are felt in education, then
the solutim to the problem is to be found there, too. Neither Ch'oe nor
.HE consider themselves revolutionaries, in the sense of one who advocates
abruptly changing a social convention. Hence neither proposes an outright
ban m the characters, as was done in the North. Ch'oe reconmends they
be eliminated from the language slowly by removing them from the mandatory
educational curricula (1 946:92). I& sees his task as promoting a tradition
begun more than 500 years ago when hangul was invented, by widening its
application from literature, which it currently daninates, to all types
of writing ( I 974a: 60) ,
Recent publications in the United States and abroad attest to renewed
interest in the functioning of Chinese character-based writing and the
role these systems play in the material and intellectual lives of societies
using them. Koreans, being one of the latter, are intimately concerned
with writing reform, and have published voluminously on both sides of the
question. Chloe ~$n Bae and H6 Vng are the outstanding proponents of
all-hangul writing. Their views contrast sharply with those of other
Koreans who find merit in the mixed hangul-character script, and make
interesting arguments to support it. Whatever me's disposition to the
characters may be, examining the Korean data will prove rewarding.
Notes
1946 and 1970, Ch6ng1?hsa, Seoul.