[Korea] Korean Writing question

[Quozl]

Hi All,

I was wondering when writing was introduced into Korea. My understanding is that the Korean Neolithic lasted from about 2000 BC ish to about 900 BC ish, when the Bronze age started in Korea. The Iron Age started around 400 BC ish.

This mirrors roughly the dates for those periods in Britain. Writing, and therefore History was introduced, as best I can tell, into Britain around Roman times, and hence the Iron Age and earlier is seen as Pre-history in Britain, and the Roman Period is seen as the start of "History". I am using the term "history" as I believe it is commonly interpretted, as written tradtion and record, rather than oral tradition and record.

I was wondering when writing was introduced into Korea, simply to try and understand when the Pre-history ends in Korea and he History starts.

I suppose coupled to this, is the question of whether Hangool (?) (I am not sure if this is the correct term or spelling for the writen Korean script, sorry) was the first "Korean" script or whether there were earlier Korean predecessors? I understand that there was an element of Chinese influence in writing in Korea, and I wasn't sure whether this eradicated earlier Korean scripts or whether it was the origin of Korean Scripts.

I was wondering if this was the correct place to ask such questions?

Any help would be most appreciated.

Quozl

[klaasb]

Koreans were probably already familiar with Chinese characters in the times of Gojoseon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gojoseon).
Various writing systems were used to be able to express Korean words with hanja. Probably the most famous of them being idu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idu). After the introduction of hangul (hangeul) Chinese characters were still used to write Korean words of Chinese origin while hangul was used for Korean words. It wasn't until very recently (1970's) that people also started to use hangul to write sino-korean words in textbooks and such.

[Quozl]

Many Thanks Klaasb.

Based upon the info you provided, then I would anticipate that writing was intorduced to Korea some time betweeen 1500 BC and 800 BC ish, via chinese influences.

Many thanks for your help.

All the best,

Quozl