Kugyŏl

 ( Korean Writing Systems ) 

Kugyŏl (also Romanized as gugyeol or kwukyel, among others) is a family of annotation systems for rendering texts written in Classical Chinese into understandable Korean language. It is first attested within Buddhist texts in Chinese from the Goryeo period, and reached the height of its use during the Joseon dynasty, when readings of the Chinese classics were of paramount social importance. In gugyeol, the original text in Classical Chinese was not modified, and the additional markers were simply inserted between words or phrases. Therefore, ignoring the gugyeol annotations, the text would be readable as regular Classical Chinese.

---

Etymology The term gugyeol (Hanja: 口訣) can be rendered as "phrase parting" and may refer to the separation of one Chinese phrase from another. This name is itself believed to originate from the use of hanja characters to represent the Middle Korean phrase ipgyeot (입겿), with a similar meaning. Gugyeol is also sometimes referred to as to (), or hyeonto (), since to is also used to refer to the morphological affixes themselves or as seogui (), which can be rendered as "interpretation of the classics."

---

Terminology Depending on the period, the gugyeol markings were (sometimes abbreviated) Chinese characters, called jato gugyeol (). In some cases, they were marked with simple dots and lines, called jeomto gugyeol () whose positions and angles relative to the Chinese character encoded its reading. Jeomto gugyeol is similar to the okototen system in Japanese. After the advent of Hangul in the 15th century, gugyeol also started to be written using Hangul, called hangul gugyeol ().

The gugyeol annotations were marked on paper using a stylus with no ink, called gakpil gugyeol (), or handwritten with ink, or in some cases printed with the Classical Chinese text.

Some early gugyeol specify the order in which the Chinese words should be read, effectively reordering the Chinese sentence into Korean word order. This is called yeokdok gugyeol () or seokdok gugyeol (), which is comparable to kanbun kundoku in Japanese. On the other hand, the vast majority of later instances of gugyeol keep the original Chinese word order. This is called sundok gugyeol ().

---

History Gugyeol is first attested from the 11th century in the early Goryeo dynasty, but evidence indicates it likely dates back to the 7th century or earlier.

(2025). 9788959663897, Thaehaksa Publishing. . ISBN 9788959663897

In this period, certain hanja characters were used (along with specialized symbols) to represent Korean sounds through their meaning. For example, the syllable '잇' ( is) was represented with the hanja character since that character has the Korean meaning '있다.' This technique came to be replaced in the late Goryeo period with using hanja characters according to their sound. The later version of the gugyeol system was formalized by Chŏng Mong-ju and Kwŏn Kŭn around 1400 in the early Joseon Dynasty, at the behest of King Taejong. Many Confucian classics, including the Classic of Poetry, were rendered into gugyeol at the time.

The term gugyeol is often extended beyond this early system to similar uses of hangul following the introduction of the Hunminjeongeum in the 15th century. In this respect, gugyeol remains in occasional use in contemporary South Korea, where such techniques are still sometimes used to render the Confucian classics into readable form.

Gugyeol should be distinguished from the idu script and hyangchal systems, which preceded it. Gugyeol used specialized markings, together with a subset of hanja, to represent Korean morphological markers as an aid for Korean readers to understand the grammar of Chinese texts. Also, the idu and the hyangchal systems appear to have been used primarily to render Korean into hanja; on the other hand, gugyeol sought to render Chinese texts into Korean with a minimum of distortion.

---

Table of Gugyeol

---

See also

• Hanja
• Idu script
• Hyangchal
• Hangul
• Katakana
• Kanbun
• Giải âm

---

Further reading

• Kim Mu-rim (김무림) (2025). 9788957261859, Hankook Munhwasa. ISBN 9788957261859

---

External links

• Doosan Encyclopedia entry
• 구결(口訣) - 한국민족문화대백과사전(Korean)

Post Comment