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Degree Name

MA (Master of Arts)

Program

History

Date of Award

5-2020

Committee Chair or Co-Chairs

Henry J. Antkiewicz

Committee Members

William D. Burgess, Tom Lee

Abstract

Korea had traditionally confined literacy to a small elite ruling class, who were trained to read and write in Chinese characters until the end of the nineteenth century. Literacy education must be made both easier and more accessible, argued Korean intellectuals who endorsed the promotion of hangul, a phonetic native Korean alphabet that had only been circulating among the less privileged. The notion that hangul should become the standardized national script of Korea has also been voiced by Western missionaries in the country. Korean nationalists who became heavily influenced by Christianity further elaborated this goal. A nationalistic movement to promote mass literacy and to reclaim Korea’s lost cultural legacy had a foreign origin that had been overlooked for a long time. This thesis seeks to analyze the degree to which foreign influences had on the inception of Korea’s scripto-nationalism.

Document Type

Thesis - restricted

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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