A comparative study of children’s Chinese character textbooks in Korea and China,with a focus on Yu Hap

Introduction

Most writing systems used worldwide have resulted from the spread and borrowing of scripts. In a fundamental sense, the spread and borrowing of scripts has been defined as part of the process of disseminating culture (Wang, 2016). The spread of Chinese characters can be defined as the spread of Han (汉) culture or Chinese culture. The various countries and regions in which Chinese characters have spread and continue to be used today still maintain a collective consciousness of Chinese culture.

This study first examines why and how Chinese characters spread to Korea, and subsequently compares children’s Chinese character (mengxue) ¹ textbooks in China and Korea to understand how Chinese characters have been accepted and acculturated. The types of characters used in children’s textbooks in the two countries are compared with a focus on Yu Hap ² to examine how common the characters used in it were and its academic value. Specifically, this study analyzes the characters in Yu Hap resulting from the spread of Chinese characters into Korea, and compares the analysis results with the characters in Chinese children’s textbooks. Moreover, this study compares modern Chinese characters commonly used in Korea and China to better understand Yu Hap’s diachronic value. Through the comparison of a diverse range of textbooks and characters, this study hopes to provide a multi-faceted understanding of how commonly the characters in Yu Hap were used and its academic value, particularly given that it is considered Korea’s most prominent children’s textbook for learning Chinese characters. This article is expected to serve as a reference for future research by providing a proper evaluation of Yu Hap, a textbook that has received little scholarly attention.

The spread of Chinese characters into Korea

Writing has developed through a long historical process. Chinese characters have undergone many changes in how they are written and structured since they first appeared as the oracle bone script and evolved to the simplified characters now in use in modern China. Chinese characters first started spreading extensively into the East Asian region some 2000 years ago with the Qin Dynasty. The use and reconstruction of Chinese characters by people around China can be divided into three phases: the first phase involved the use of the Chinese language along with the use of Chinese characters, but Chinese characters did not yet have any relationship with the language of the people; the second phase occurred when the surrounding people used Chinese characters with different meanings but the same pronunciations to represent their language, or created their own alphabet to express at least parts of their language in written form—in short, their languages were broadly mixed with the Chinese language; and the third phase came about when these people created native scripts and used them to fully represent their language in written form. For example, the Japanese created Kana along with their own “informal” words. These written letters reconstructed Chinese character marks as phonetic representations (Wang, 2016). Korea also went through this three-stage process. After accepting Chinese characters from China in the first stage, Koreans had subsequently created their own native writing system of Hangul by the third stage. Unlike Japan’s Kana, however, Hangul was made of a completely new set of letters that went beyond just creating phonetic markings for Chinese characters.

By the first and second centuries, Chinese characters were already in use in the Korean Peninsula, and by around the fourth century, Chinese characters had become widespread on the peninsula through the dissemination of Buddhist scriptures. Chinese characters have become Korea’s official and most used written language since then. Chinese characters were accepted in the Korean Peninsula in two different ways: the first involved the use of Chinese-style characters in their original form; the second involved the use of Korean-style characters. Korean-style characters went through a process of first being written in Korean word order (seogichae), ³ before they were restructured to match the composition of Korean sentences (idu; literally, “official reading”). The system subsequently developed following Korean word order and using postpositional particles and vocabulary (hyangchal; literally, “vernacular letters”), until Koreans finally added Korean-style postpositional particles within the characters (gugyol; literally, “phrase parting”). By the time the Koreans had reached the hyangchal stage, Chinese characters had undergone immense changes from the original characters imported from China. At the idu stage, the characters were used to denote proper nouns and express paragraphs, and they became broadly used in Korean translations of Chinese writings and official state documents. The acculturation of Chinese characters in the Korean Peninsula led to the joint use of the Korean and Chinese languages, and many Chinese character-based words became part of the Korean lexicon. During this period, when Chinese characters and the Korean language were used in tandem, Chinese characters were used mainly in the written language of the elite and in Korea’s relations with the outside world. Meanwhile, hyangchal was relegated to use as the common vernacular among the middle class and others in Korea’s domestic sphere.

In 1444, after Korea announced the creation of Hangul, this alphabet began to be used in the country, and the Hangul alphabet and Chinese characters were often used together (Lee, 2013; Wang, 2018). Chinese characters were generally used to write the roots of words, while Hangul was used to write the endings of words. From the late 19th to the early 20th century, the growth of Korean national consciousness and the influx of Western thought led to political efforts to weaken the influence of Chinese characters on the Korean language; however, Chinese characters have remained a part of the Korean language. Studies of the Korean language suggest that around 70% of the vocabulary is based on Chinese loan words. Ultimately, Hangul alone cannot effectively communicate the massive numbers of homonyms in the Korean language that are based on Chinese characters (Qiu, 2008).

There have been only a few scholarly attempts to explain the spread of Chinese characters into the Korean Peninsula. Zhou (1989) stated that the process in which Chinese characters spread into Korea and Japan comprised four phases: (a) the “learning phase” (Chinese-style characters); (b) the “borrowing phase” (non-Chinese characters); (c) the “copying phase” (the use of Chinese character-style markings on words); and (d) the “creative phase” (alphabetic writing). Luo (2001) argues that when Chinese characters first spread into the Korean Peninsula, the people surrounding China in East Asia had great respect for China and believed that Han culture was superior. Ultimately, this allowed them to absorb all aspects of Han culture and fully accept the tool that the Chinese used for written communication, that is, Chinese characters.

Koreans used Chinese characters to record scriptures and documents as well as their history. Chinese characters were also used by Koreans to create works of literature and records of their language. Jin (2007) argues that Koreans did not study Chinese characters to simply “import” the Han culture; rather, this was required in order to develop their society. At the time, Koreans only used a vernacular language, not a written language. This meant they had little choice but to borrow an already popular written language to record everything they needed to write down about their lives and society. This, ultimately, is the underlying reason behind Chinese characters’ spread into Korea. Zhou and Zhang (2008) argue that the Chinese language spread to nearby countries through education and state-level examinations to recruit high-ranking officials.

Broadly speaking, Chinese characters disseminated into the Korean Peninsula via several routes. Firstly, they spread through the country’s schools and education system. The Korean Peninsula is connected to China, and thus was impacted by Chinese culture from ancient times. Koreans initially did not have their own writing system and were greatly influenced by Chinese characters, which were the most developed written language in ancient East Asia. According to historical documents, successive kings in the Koguryo Dynasty placed a great deal of importance on the study of Confucian texts. For example, during the second year of Kokuryo’s Sosurim Dynasty (372 AD), the king established a national educational institute called the Great School (Taehak) to cultivate skills in various fields among the members of the royalty, including the study of Chinese classics, literature, and martial arts. In Koguryo, local private schools (pyondang) were established throughout the country for members of the general population in addition to the national schools. According to the records written in Xin Jiu Tang Shu (新旧唐书), these schools used Wu Jing (五经) and Shi ji (史记), Han Shu 
(汉书), Hou Han Shu (后汉书), Jin Chun Qiu (晋春秋), Yu Pian (玉篇), Zi Tong (字统), Zi Lin (字林), and Wen Xuan 
(文选), among others, as textbooks. During the Koguryo period, the government improved the educational system to meet the needs of society and culture of the time, ultimately establishing a systematic stage-based educational system that included Songgyunggwan, Confucian temples/schools (hyanggyo), educational institutes (hakdang), and private schools (sahak) (Feng, 2014).

Secondly, many Korean students went to China to study Chinese, which was another important way in which Chinese characters spread into Korea. Xin Tang Shu (新唐书) states that “During the 13^th year of the Xia Dynasty, a total of 1,200 student dormitories were built, and around 8,000 students from the Koguryo, Paekjae, and Shilla dynasties were sent to study [in China].” The Korean royal court in the Ming period needed interpreters and document exchanges with the Ming Dynasty, and accordingly sent students to China in several ways. This is how Korea developed many outstanding Chinese interpreters, such as Sin Sukju, Song Sammun, and Choi Sejin, along with many famous Chinese scholars (Liu, 2009).

Thirdly, commercial activities and trade were also important drivers of the spread of Chinese characters into the Korean Peninsula. Historical records suggest that the Koryo government prioritized Chinese books and treated Chinese book sellers well (Chen, 2004).

Fourthly, Chinese characters spread to the Korean Peninsula through religion. China greatly influenced ancient Korean religions, and large numbers of Buddhist and Taoist texts traveled to Korea through religious and cultural exchanges. Historical records suggest that 28 merchants from the Song Dynasty gave Koryo rulers Xin Zhu Hua Yan Jing (新注华严经) 
in the fourth year of King Sonjong’s reign (1087) (Chen, 2004). The Grand Tripitaka of Koryo, Record of a Journey to the Five Indian Kingdoms and other texts were connected to the spread of Buddhism into the Korean Peninsula.

Finally, some scholars argue that the beauty of Chinese characters, their refined attractiveness, and the development of calligraphy were the reasons for the spread of Chinese characters into the Korean Peninsula (Sheng, 2006).

In short, Chinese characters spread into the Korean Peninsula through diverse routes, and they satisfied the demand for a written language in Korea’s educational, commercial, religious, and artistic fields as they developed. The next section of this article focuses on how, once they had entered Korea, Chinese characters spread throughout the country and were used in the country’s education system. It subsequently conducts a comparative analysis of children’s textbooks from the time. This analysis compares the types of Chinese characters used in Korean and Chinese children’s textbooks to examine their differences and to broaden our understanding of Yu Hap’s academic value.

A comparative analysis of the characters used in children’s textbooks in Korea and China

Children’s textbooks of the Chosun Dynasty

Korea’s school education traditions are based on and developed from Koguryo’s taehak, Shilla’s kukhak, Koryo’s kukjagam, and the Chosun Dynasty’s songgyunggwan. During the Chosun Dynasty, educational institutions included hyanggyo, songgyunggwan, the four schools providing technical training (sabuhakdang), private academies (sowon), and village schools (sodang). Hyanggyo, songgyunggwan, and sabuhakdang were state-established educational institutions, while sowon and sodang were private educational institutions. The educational institutions set up by the state were all advanced, and the lack of state-run institutions to teach the fundamentals of Chinese characters led to a proliferation of privately run schools, such as sodang. The textbooks used in each of these institutions ranged from children’s textbooks to historical textbooks, including neo-Confucianist texts such as Five Classics of Confucianism and Thousand Character Classic (千字文). Privately run schools generally used a great variety of children’s textbooks, including Thousand Character Classic, to teach the fundamentals of Chinese characters (Kim, 2001). At sodang, which conducted elementary-level education during the Chosun Dynasty, textbooks were divided into “written language textbooks” and “general education textbooks.” Written language textbooks were divided into Thousand Character Classic, textbooks that followed Thousand Character Classic to the letter, and those that took a looser interpretation of the text (Jeong, 2016).

The major children’s textbooks published for educating children in the written language during the Chosun Dynasty included, from most to least prevalent, Thousand Character Classic, Yu Hap, Collection of Characters for Training Children (训蒙字会), Newly Augmented Yu Hap (新增类合), and the collection of works known as Elegant Banter 
(儿学编). These children’s textbooks were structured in two ways: (a) written out similar to Thousand Character Classic by the number of strokes in each character; or (b) characters written out on each page as they were taught in Chinese schools. After analyzing the pros and cons of Chinese children’s textbooks, Korean textbook makers published their textbooks on the basis of the classification of the characters, or printed writings about ancient Korean history and other famous writings. The children’s textbooks provided a broader lexicon for Koreans to use in their lives and included comprehensive descriptions of ideas and vocabulary that allowed students with a basic understanding of their country’s traditional culture to further develop it (Kim, 2001).

Scholarly research on these children’s textbooks thus far has focused on individual textbooks, and many scholars have simply highlighted the fact that Korea’s educational system focused on the use of the Confucian classics. There has been little research focused on the use of Elegant Banter and Yu Hap, which also have academic value in the teaching of written language. This study conducts an in-depth review of how common the characters in Yu Hap were and its academic value based on a comparative analysis of Yu Hap—which was broadly used during the Chosun Dynasty and is considered to have ample academic value—with other children’s textbooks to understand the kinds of characters included in the textbooks.

Past research on Yu Hap

Children’s textbooks used in educational institutions during the Chosun Dynasty were divided broadly into those focused on written language education and those focused on “sentence-based” education. Yu Hap, this study’s focus of investigation, can be classified as a written language education textbook that teaches students Chinese characters and words, including Chinese characters.

There are differing scholarly opinions about who first wrote Yu Hap. Some scholars argue that it was someone unknown, while others argue it was Seo Gajong. If the author was Seo Gajong (1420–1488), Yu Hap would first have been published in the mid-15th century, as suggested by his biography (Jeong, 2016). It can be surmised that Yu Hap was made in Korea given that the children’s textbook Zhong Hua Meng Xue Ji Cheng (中華蒙學集成), which is a record of all the children’s textbooks published in China over the years, does not list a textbook called Yu Hap (Kim, 2001).

Two versions of Yu Hap are familiar to Koreans: an annotated version with its title written in Hangul, and another version written in Chinese characters. There are only eight copies of the annotated version at Buddhist temples in South Korea, and along with the block printed edition published privately—and considering those copies that went missing—there were probably many more than the current 10 copies we know about (Ahn, 1999). This suggests that Yu Hap was used extensively during the Chosun Dynasty.

Yu Hap is an important textbook because it was the first of all the children’s textbooks published in Korea to organize Chinese characters by type. As discussed in the introduction to this paper, Yu Hap categorized Chinese characters according to their meaning and listed them in four-character sayings. The textbook did not list the categories, but it is easy to understand that they are categorized by meaning by examining the textbook. In short, Yu Hap includes the following categories: 数目 (numbers), 天文 (astronomy), 众色 (colors), 地理 (geomancy), 草卉 (grass), 树木 (trees), 果实 (fruits), 禾谷 (grains), 菜蔬 (vegetables), 禽鸟 (birds), 兽畜 (beasts), 鱗介 (marine animals/fish), 虫豸 (insects), 人伦 (humanity), 都邑 (village), 眷属 (family), 身体 (body), 室屋 (house), 铺陣 (building), 金帛 (minerals, silk), 资用 (other goods), 器械 (machine), 食馔 (food), 衣服 (clothes), 心术 (heart/mind), 动止 (the movement of things), and 事物 (things) (Kim, 2001).

Yu Hap recorded 1512 characters without any categorization, and while Yu Hap and Newly Augmented Yu Hap include different Chinese characters, they both have 27 categories. This way of organizing the characters is the greatest difference Yu Hap has from Thousand Character Classic. The two textbooks were complementary to each other because they both helped students study Confucian texts and Chinese characters (Jeong, 2016). The organization of Chinese characters by meaning was very effective, because by allowing students to focus their study on Chinese characters with similar meanings, they came to understand and remember the characters clearly. That this method was effective is proven by the fact that most children’s textbooks that appeared after Yu Hap were published using the same method.

Yu Hap is significant for being the first written language education textbook published in Korea. It was published to supplement the shortcomings of Thousand Character Classic, which was too abstract and difficult to learn, and it served as the model for Newly Augmented Yu Hap, a revised version of Yu Hap created by Yu Hi Chun in the ninth year of Sonjo in 1576. While Yu Hap was an effective study tool for Chinese characters, some have argued that the textbook was flawed for not including many of the important Chinese characters used in real life at the time (Kim, 2001). The next section of this article analyzes the types of characters used in different children’s textbooks in order to examine how many commonly used Chinese characters were in the textbooks along with how commonly used the Chinese characters in Yu Hap were.

Yu Hap and children’s textbooks in Korea

We will compare Korean and Chinese textbooks by first conducting a character-type analysis of Korean children’s textbooks. The researcher conducted character-type analyses of four children’s textbooks: Yu Hap, Collection of Characters for Training Children, Newly Augmented Yu Hap, and Elegant Banter. The number of Chinese characters in all these textbooks totals 9872, and the total number of character types, after removing recurring characters, is 5096. Table 1 shows the number and proportion of these 5096 characters by frequency.

Those characters listed under frequency number 1 do not appear in other textbooks, and the higher the frequency number, the more commonly they are used. Those characters in frequency number 3 and above are used very commonly. The numbers and proportions of characters in textbooks by frequency are shown in Table 2.

Chinese characters that are uncommonly used appear the most infrequently in Yu Hap, while Chinese characters that have a frequency of three times and above are those most commonly used, with a proportion of 79% (1197 characters). The textbooks compared in this analysis were some of the earliest published versions of Yu Hap; nonetheless, they have some of the most used characters compared to children’s textbooks published later. This suggests that Yu Hap uses many commonly used characters and holds a more significant academic value than many Korean children’s textbooks.

Yu Hap and Chinese children’s textbook San Bai Qian (三百千)

San Bai Qian is an abbreviation of the names of three children’s textbooks long used in China: Three Character Classic 
(三字经), Hundred Family Names (百家姓), and Thousand Character Classic. The author of Thousand Character Classic is said to be Zhou Xingsi (周兴嗣, ?~521) of the Liang Dynasty, but Thousand Character Classic is the only one of its kind for which the era in which the text was published and its author are clearly identified. The text is made up of four expressions and 250 phrases in poetic form, in which eight characters in each sentence are used to form rhymed verses. The text goes beyond just teaching students individual characters; it has been used widely as a useful and effective textbook to teach calligraphy, reading comprehension, and for the understanding of poetry (Lim, 2010c). Thousand Character Classic remains a familiar children’s textbook for Koreans and Chinese learning Chinese characters.

Hundred Family Names, or “Bai Jia Xing,” is essentially a list of surnames in poetic form, with four characters in each of its eight phrases. The text was likely created between the years the Song Dynasty came to power in 960 and 978, when the kingdoms of Wu and Yue defected to the Song. Three Character Classic and Thousand Character Classic were written by influential experts, while Hundred Family Names has no author and simply lists surnames. Moreover, the last character of each phrase rhymes with the next, but there is no fixed order, and the four-character and eight-character phrases do not create meaningful sentences. However, the text is excellent for students to read and memorize Chinese characters through rhymes. The copy of the most widely published version of this text has 568 characters with 408 single-character names and 60 multi-character names for a total of 504 surnames (Lim, 2010a).

Three Character Classic has sentences with three characters each for a total of 356 phrases and 1068 characters. The text includes a wide scope of information, ranging from the elementary Jing Shi Zi Ji (经史子集) to morality, common sense, etiquette, the encouragement of learning, and ancient history. There is no information about when and by whom the text was created, but it is commonly believed to have been written by Wang Yinglin (王应麟, 1223–1296) of the Song Dynasty (Lim, 2010b). A comparison of the characters used in San Bai Qian and Yu Hap can be found in Table 3.

Three Character Classic is characterized by the inclusion of numerous characters multiple times. By frequency, 子 occurs 21 times, 不 occurs 20 times, and 有 occurs 18 times; 182 characters occur more than twice, while 332 occur once, out of the total 514 characters. Hundred Family Names includes 504 surnames, and there are 564 characters recorded with 60 multi-character words that appear twice. 公 occurs six times, 司 and 孫 occur five times each, and 44 characters occur twice or more, while those in frequency number 1 equal 456, out of a total of 500 characters. As is well known, Thousand Character Classic has no repeated characters and 1000 character types. Yu Hap has 1510 character types.

The number of characters occurring in both Three Character Classic and Yu Hap is 315, which is 61% of the 514 characters in Three Character Classic. The number of characters occurring in both Hundred Family Names and Yu Hap is 203, which is 41% of the 500 characters in Hundred Family Names. An analysis of the characters found in Thousand Character Classic and Yu Hap shows that 575 characters occur in both, which is 57.5% of the 1000 characters in Thousand Character Classic. Three Character Classic has the most characters in common with Yu Hap, while Thousand Character Classic has more than half of its characters in common with Yu Hap.

The total number of characters used in Three Character Classic, Hundred Family Names, and Thousand Character Classic is 2014. The total number of characters appearing in all three San Bai Qian texts is 94, while the number of characters appearing in two San Bai Qian texts is 344; the number of characters appearing in just one of the San Bai Qian texts is 1044. The total number of characters in all the San Bai Qian texts is 1482. Several characters appear only in one of the San Bai Qian texts, because the intent and content of Three Character Classic, Hundred Family Names, and Thousand Character Classic are all different.

An analysis of the 1482 characters in San Bai Qian and the 1510 characters in Yu Hap found that the two texts share 747 characters, which is 50% of the characters in San Bai Qian and 49% of the characters in Yu Hap. This shows that there is considerable overlap in the characters used in the two texts, which confirms that both contain about half of the most-used characters in Korea and China. When considering that Chinese characters were used mainly in written texts during the Chosun Dynasty, the Chinese characters used in China, where they originated, and in Korea are inevitably very similar in both form and meaning as well as in how commonly they are used.

While textbooks in both China and Korea aimed to teach children the characters, they were nonetheless published for different reasons. Considering this, the fact that around 50% of the characters in San Bai Qian and Yu Hap are the same demonstrates that China and Korea had similar perceptions about which characters were in common use. The 747 characters commonly used in both countries have remained in common use until the present day. This will be explored in the next section.

Basic Chinese Character for Educational Use, List of Common Words in Modern Chinese (現代漢語常用字表), and Yu Hap and San Bai Qian

Basic Chinese Character for Educational Use is the 1800 characters defined by the Korean government for use in Chinese character education. These include 900 characters learned in middle school and another 900 learned in high school. A comparison of the 1510 characters in Yu Hap and these government-set characters shows that 947 characters are the same, that is, 53% of the characters in Basic Chinese Character for Educational Use and 63% of the characters in Yu Hap. A comparison with the 1482 characters in San Bai Qian finds that 932 characters overlap, which is 52% of the characters in Basic Chinese Character for Educational Use and 63% of those in San Bai Qian.

List of Common Words in Modern Chinese covers 99.48% of the Chinese characters used in writing in China. A comparison of this set with Yu Hap found 1088 overlapping characters, which equals 44% of the set and 72% of Yu Hap. A comparison between the set and 1482 characters in the San Bai Qian found that 1038 characters overlapped, which equals 42% of the set and 70% of the characters in San Bai Qian. Table 4 shows these results.

As Table 4 shows, a very significant proportion of characters overlap in Basic Chinese Character for Educational Use, List of Common Words in Modern Chinese, and San Bai Qian. This supports the idea that the same characters in Yu Hap and San Bai Qian have continued to be used from ancient times to the present day. The proportion of overlap of Yu Hap and San Bai Qian with the set of characters in List of Common Words in Modern Chinese is higher than that of characters in Basic Chinese Character for Educational Use, which are most used in Korea. This is because the characters in Yu Hap were those used frequently in Korea in ancient times, but a significant number of these characters became less common over time. This shift is likely because of changes in the lifestyles and educational environments of Korea and China, Korea’s implementation of Hangul-only policies, and cultural changes in the two countries with the passage of time.

Conclusion

This article has examined why and how Chinese characters spread into Korea and subsequently conducted a comparative analysis of Korean and Chinese children’s textbooks with a focus on Yu Hap from the perspective of the acceptance and acculturation of Chinese characters. It has also explored how commonly used the characters in Yu Hap are and the text’s learning value as one of Korea’s children’s textbooks. Yu Hap is very significant as the first written language textbook published in Korea. A comparative analysis of the characters used in four children’s books published in Korea (Yu Hap, Collection of Characters for Training Children, Newly Augmented Yu Hap, and Elegant Banter) found that characters classified as occurring only once had the lowest proportion, while those classified as occurring three or more times had the highest proportion, which means that the characters in Yu Hap are very common and the text has a high learning value. An analysis of the 1482 characters in San Bai Qian and the 1510 characters in Yu Hap found that the two texts share 747 characters, which is 50% of the characters in San Bai Qian and 49% of those in Yu Hap. In light of this, the fact that around 50% of the characters in San Bai Qian and Yu Hap are the same shows that both China and Korea had similar perceptions of the characters in common use. A significant proportion of characters overlap in Basic Chinese Character for Educational Use, List of Common Words in Modern Chinese, and Yu Hap and San Bai Qian, which supports the idea that the same characters in Yu Hap and San Bai Qian have continued to be used from ancient times to the present day.

The most prominent children’s textbook of China, Thousand Character Classic, was published in the sixth century, and that of Korea, Yu Hap, is thought to have been published in the mid-15th century. In short, it took around 1000 years after the Chinese for Koreans to publish a children’s textbook for written language. When Chinese characters first spread into the Korean Peninsula, Koreans simply copied textbooks from China, but later, as Chinese character education became more widespread through state-led and private schools, children’s textbooks gradually became more localized.

Further research will hopefully focus more specifically on Yu Hap and other Korean children’s textbooks to explore their learning value. This research will serve as a basis for broader studies of Chinese character education in Korea.