South Korea begins construction of Korean alphabet museum

Hangeul Museum is expected to open in late 2012 The construction of a museum about the Korean alphabet, Hangeul, began on Wednesday and is schedule for completion in the first half of 2013, Yonhap news agency quoted the ministry of Culture as saying.
Hanguel, considered as one of the simplest and most logical language writing systems in the world, was invented by King Sejong of Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) in 1443 to replace an older writing system based on the Chinese script.
South Korea has been making active efforts to promote the Korean writing system since a tribe on a remote Indonesian Island, in danger of losing its culture because it has no written language.
South Korea designated Hangeul as its official alphabet in 2009.
The Hangeul Museum will be a three-story building with a total floor space of 11,322 square meters inside the compound of the National Museum of Korea in central Seoul, the ministry said.
In addition to 4,200 square meters of exhibit space, the museum will have separate rooms where visitors can experience the superiority of Hangeul and search computerized information on the Korean characters, the ministry said.
In a ground-breaking ceremony, Choung Byoung-gug, minister of culture, sports and tourism, said that King Sejong\'s invention of Hangeul was \"a landmark event heralding a grand switch from an age of resorting to the Chinese script to an era of \'Hangeul civilization\' in which Koreans came to have their own culture and identity.\"
\"We will make the Hangeul Museum into the hub of the government\'s efforts to spread the Korean writing system to other parts of the world and globalize it,\" he stressed.
The 36.9-billion-won (US$34.6 million) construction project began after President Lee Myung-bak instructed the culture ministry to build a tourist spot focused on Hangeul and to promote the writing system as an icon of Korean culture.