About & Sources
About & sources.
An independent cultural memorial project. This is not an official site of any government or national institution and is not affiliated with any organisation.
What are we commemorating?
On 4 November 1926 (the 29th day of the ninth lunar month), the Korean Language Research Society and Sinmin-sa held the first ceremony for the 480th anniversary of Hunminjeongeum and called the day “Gagyanal”. 2026 is a hundred years later.
Today’s date, 9 October, has been used since 1945, based on a record in the Haerye edition of Hunminjeongeum found in 1940. That is why this site never says “Hangeul Day has been on 9 October for a hundred years”. The full story is in A Hundred Years of Records.
Historical sources
The timeline and notes were newly written after reading the sources below (all in Korean). Events without a confirmed source are left out, and the date each source was checked is recorded. If you find an error, please tell us with a source.
조남호, 「한글날의 유래와 변천」, 『새국어소식』 한글날 특집
「알고 싶은 한글」 — 한글날이 10월 9일로 정해지기까지
기록으로 만나는 대한민국 — 국경일
「세종대왕역사문화관, 한글 점자 반포 100주년 특별전」 (2026-05-11, 국가유산청 발표 인용)
The notes on letter design draw on the Haerye’s chapter on letter design and the National Institute of Korean Language’s “Learning about Hangeul” (in Korean) (opens in a new window).
Languages
This site is available in Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional). Korean is the original; the other languages are the project’s own translations and have not yet been reviewed by native speakers. Corrections are welcome.
Fonts & images
Headings use Hahmlet (Hypertype) and numbers and notes use IBM Plex Mono, both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1; Hahmlet is also served as a subset containing only the letters this site uses. Body text uses your device’s own fonts. The manuscript grid, mouth cross-sections and date chart were drawn by this project; the cross-sections are explanatory, not anatomically exact. Photographs and artefact images are not shown until their rights are cleared.
Privacy
This site uses no login, no cookie-based tracking and no analytics tools. Text typed into the Poster Studio is only drawn as an image inside your browser; it is never sent to or stored on a server.