Legal and Medical Terminology and the Exclusive Use of Hangul: The Lost Visibility of Knowledge
In the mid-20th century, South Korea promoted the exclusive use of Hangul, and by the 1960s, Chinese characters had almost disappeared from school education. While this was praised as a symbol of improved literacy and nationalist modernization, the educational and linguistic research communities have repeatedly pointed out that it has become difficult to master advanced knowledge systems such as law and medicine, especially international law.
For example, let us consider the international law term "terra nullius" (無主地先占). In Japanese, the Chinese characters make the meaning visible at a glance: "無主地" (land without an owner) and "先占" (occupying first). Although Korean uses the same Chinese characters, they are replaced by a string of sounds like "무주지 선점" (mu-ju-ji seon-jeom), making it significantly harder for learners, and even more so for the general public without legal training, to understand the semantic structure without the characters. This is not merely a difference in linguistic notation, but a problem directly linked to the efficiency of knowledge transfer and the speed of conceptual thinking.
Was the exclusive use of Hangul more rational than the kana-ization of Japanese?
However, what is important here is that when compared to the kana-ization of Japanese, the exclusive use of Hangul had a certain degree of rationality.
For example, if you write the word "democracy" (民主) in Japanese as "minshu," the meanings of the constituent elements "min" (people) and "shu" (master/rule) do not remain in that sound sequence at all. However, in the Korean word "민주" (minju), the meaning of the Chinese character corresponding to each syllable, "민" (min) and "주" (ju), has permeated the sound over a long history of usage, and at the level of daily vocabulary, the semantic unity is relatively well-preserved.
In this respect, it can be said that the degree of semantic loss in the exclusive use of Hangul was smaller than in the kana-ization of Japanese. In fact, words such as "민주" (minju), "교육" (gyoyuk), and "자유" (jayu) are understood by sound alone through repeated use in Korean society, and they function sufficiently without Chinese characters at the general vocabulary level.
The burden of losing the "semantic structure" of technical terms
However, when the discussion reaches advanced specialized fields, this rationality has clear limits.
In Japanese, even with difficult legal or medical terms, one can infer the general content from the meanings of the constituent elements by looking at the Chinese characters. For example, in legal terms:
Improper omission offense
Principle of good faith
Prohibition of abuse of rights
Request for extinction of mortgage
Creditor's subrogation right
And for medical terms:
Pancreaticoduodenectomy
Ventricular septal defect
Malignant melanoma
Idiopathic interstitial pneumonia
Dilated cardiomyopathy
These are just a few examples. All of these are Sino-Korean vocabulary terms common to both Japan and Korea; while they may seem difficult at first glance, one can grasp the hierarchical structure of their meanings to some extent if one has knowledge of kanji. 'Nonfeasance' (fuzakui-han) is the negation of 'acting' (sakui), and the 'principle of good faith' (shingi-seijitsu-gensoku) can be broken down into 'good faith' (shingi = trust and duty) and 'sincerity' (seijitsu = acting with sincerity).
On the other hand, in Korean, these are all written as
bujeongjeok buljakwibeom (improper omission offense)
sinuiseongsilwonchik (principle of good faith)
gwonrinamyeonggeumji (prohibition of abuse of rights)
jeodanggwonsomyeolcheonggu (claim for extinction of mortgage)
chaegwonjadaewigwon (creditor's subrogation right)
chwedusibijijangjeoljesul (pancreaticoduodenectomy)
simsiljunggyeokgyeolseonjeung (ventricular septal defect)
akseongheuksaekjong (malignant melanoma)
teukbalseongganjilseongpyeryeom (idiopathic interstitial pneumonia)
hwakjanghyeongsimgeunjung (dilated cardiomyopathy)
and there is no other way to learn them than to memorize them as blocks of sound. While some specialized books on law and medicine in Korea do include kanji, this reality demonstrates that conceptual understanding cannot keep up with the exclusive use of Hangul.
Furthermore, because visual cues have been lost, specialized books are forced to provide redundant explanations to help readers understand concepts, causing students to lose the efficiency of systematic understanding and, as a result, forcing them to bear the burden of learning through rote memorization.
Expansion of Cultural and Social Impact
The problem goes beyond the efficiency of professional education. The loss of kanji has made it difficult to access classical and historical documents, affecting the foundation of general education for society as a whole.
Many historical terms are Sino-Korean, and with exclusive Hangul notation, the origins of words and their historical contexts become difficult to see. As a result, the distance from ancient documents and classical literature has widened, and it has been pointed out that there is a danger of a disconnect in historical perception between generations. In academic exchanges with Japan and China, the loss of a common foundation as part of the kanji cultural sphere has raised the hurdles for information sharing.
What Academic Research Shows
Empirical research also supports this phenomenon.
Muscanto (2019), in a psycholinguistic study targeting Korean university students, reported that learning kanji syllables enhances the acquisition and memory retention rate of Korean vocabulary.
Studies published in PubMed are papers registered in international medical and biological databases, and they statistically demonstrate that Korean speakers who no longer see Chinese characters in their daily lives tend to lose speed and accuracy in reading Sino-Korean words.
Furthermore, from the field of Korean language education, proposals have been repeatedly made that etymologies and morphemes derived from Chinese characters should be reintroduced into the curriculum. These are all materials indicating that the exclusive use of Hangul has had a negative impact on the efficiency of specialized education.
Historical Context and Cultural Discontinuity
The exclusive use of Hangul was not merely an educational reform, but was promoted as a symbol of nationalism and modernization. As a symbol of breaking away from Japanese colonial rule and establishing a unique linguistic identity, the exclusion of Chinese characters took on political significance.
However, as a result, it has been repeatedly pointed out by academia that access to technical terms in the fields of law, medicine, and history, as well as to classical literature common to the Chinese character cultural sphere, has become difficult, severing intellectual continuity.
Conclusion: It Is Not Just the Script That Was Lost
Due to the characteristics of Hangul, the exclusive use of Hangul had a rationality in retaining the meaning of daily vocabulary compared to the kana-ization of Japanese.
However, in academic fields that require advanced concepts, such as law and medicine, the
visualization of meaning
systematic association of concepts
efficient learning routes
that Chinese characters provided were lost, and access to specialized knowledge became covered in explanation-dependency and the burden of rote memorization.
Furthermore, the difficulty of accessing classical and historical terms has cast a shadow over the continuity of education for society as a whole. The fact that Japanese continued to use both Chinese characters and kana was not merely conservatism, but a rational choice that enabled the inheritance of knowledge and culture.
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