Koreans are observing the 563rd birthday of Hangeul or written Korean. Nowhere else in the world are the creators of the written language, the process of creation and the date of its promulgation so clearly recorded in history. But can Korea say with absolute confidence that it has given due credit to this valuable invention and done its best to develop the language further?

A total of 77.39 million people speak Korean, making it the 13th most spoken language in the world, while the World Intellectual Property Organization has selected it as the world’s ninth international publication language. When the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) was first administered in 1997, 2,600 people applied. This year, 270,000 people took the test, bringing the total number of candidates to more than 1 million. And 642 institutions in 54 countries have opened Korean language courses.

But the 2,177 institutions overseas that teach Hangeul are overseen variously by either the foreign, education or culture ministries, which has led to different levels of aptitude among teachers and different texts being used. Hangeul schools that teach children of Korean residents overseas and Korean expats get only a few million won in funding per year, which means teachers face salary cuts or layoffs, and many schools end up closing down.

This year, a new age dawned for Hangeul with the selection of the Korean alphabet by the Cia-Cia Tribe on Indonesia's Buton Island to transcribe its aboriginal language. At the moment only 40 elementary schoolchildren out of the 80,000 members of the tribe are being taught Hangeul, but the adoption nonetheless proves the ease of use and efficiency of the alphabet.

The government must not rush indiscriminately to aid such projects and the Korean public should refrain from sending truckloads of gifts and donations to the island. The important thing is respect for the language, culture and religion of the Cia-Cia, and the project should be seen as an act of sharing the best attributes of Hangeul with the island people.

Meanwhile, the crudeness of the Korean used on the Internet and heard on television, as well as jargon, shortened words and other slang are an insult to our ancestors. We have ended up maiming our written language rather than advancing the alphabet we inherited from our forefathers.

In a survey in September by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, 68.8 percent of respondents said they favored reinstating Hangeul Day as a national holiday. Serious thought is needed about how such a holiday can be spent meaningfully, since it marks the moment when the written language began enlightening the people.