Language reform
Korean (1446, after division of Korea in 1945) – in the year 1446, King Sejong hired scholars to create a writing system that was both easy to learn and accurately represented the sounds of the Korean language. The alphabet he made is hangul. It was only used by common people until 1945. In North Korea, Kim Il-sung's government completely abolished hanja (Chinese characters used for the Korean language) and made hangul the only writing system of North Korea. Also, many Chinese loanwords (which was previously 60-70% of Korean vocabulary) were removed and replaced with native Korean words to purify the Korean language, although North Korea had also adopted some Russian loanwords due to its trade relations with the Soviet Union. In South Korea, hangul has largely replaced hanja, making it the main writing system in South Korea, although many South Koreans still know some hanja and write them on official documents like contracts and job applications. Hanja is usually used only for Chinese loanwords and homophones where the word's meaning isn't clear by context. Koreans are expected to know around 1,900 hanja today.