etherealpigeon

A very interesting article.

One analogy for the neo-Confucian linguistic trend in Hate Plus spearheaded by Oh Eun-a to switch the Hanmun could be how Bibles were written in Latin in the Middle Ages by the omnipresent Catholic Church, which effectively prevented any peasant from reading them in his/her own language and making them rely on the educated gentry of the clergy who could, in turn, influence them in what they told them and how they translated the Latin. The introduction of the King James Bible, the first comprehensive one of its kind to be written in English, was a huge literary step, and arguably larger than any religious connotation it may have had. Granted, not so many of the lower working classes in England and other newly Protestant countries could read these Bibles translated in their native languages and wouldn't be able to until the 18th and 19th centuries when education reforms came in, but it was a hugely important symbolic step that shaped how society was treating its lowest. If anything, it was the beginning of empowerment for the working classes, and I'd say it was a minor cause for democracy, which would come much later.

In changing the culture and the technology of the Mugunghwa to purely use a Chinese alphabet (and a very complicated one at that), I think Oh Eun-a effectively ended the peasantry having any last hope of power. Information is literally power. Societies are hugely empowered by universal literacy. The Mugunghwa was doomed by confining itself to Hanmun.

(Fuck you, Eun-a.)