Wise Leadership of Comrade Kim Il Sung to Refrain from Using Chinese Characters in Post-Liberation Period

President Kim Il Sung said:

"Chinese characters are both difficult to learn and inconvenient to write. We should refrain from using Chinese characters, and promote the use of our own spoken and written language."

President Kim Il Sung saw to the refraining from using Chinese characters in the post-liberation period as he penetrated deep into its significance and importance.

Abolition of Chinese characters was an important requirement in reshaping people into the true masters of language and further developing Korean language according to the requirements of the times and people's aspiration.

First of all, President Kim Il Sung saw to it that the refraining from using Chinese characters would be dealt with in close connection with the education of young people about mother-tongue and illiteracy.

It was very important to teach mother-tongue to the young people and abolish illiteracy among adults since they had never had opportunities to have an access to the language learning.

Thanks to the wise leadership of President Kim Il Sung, dynamic efforts were made to publish textbooks and teaching aids written only in Korean characters so that there was already a large number of textbooks and teaching aids in 1947 when Chinese characters were still in use in other publications. Furthermore, 1948 witnessed the publication of almost all the textbooks and teaching aids in Korean language except a small number of textbooks for specific purposes in some high schools, colleges and universities. On the other hand, thanks to the initiative of the President, the illiterates were taught Korean only without a single letter of Chinese characters with regards to the abolition of Chinese characters. Comprehensive efforts were made to abolish illiteracy in line with refraining from using the Chinese characters from the late 1947 or the early 1948 at the latest. As a result, these efforts could end up in a great success and it was not until 1949 that illiteracy had completely disappeared and all the publications were only in Korean characters in Korea.

Next, President Kim Il Sung saw to it that step by step efforts would be made to refrain from using Chinese characters.

He initiated that Chinese characters should be refrained on a gradual basis as long as we had been using it for long so Korean language still had many Chinese characters in it.

Thanks to the initiative, energetic efforts were made to refrain from using Chinese characters step by step so only some of the letters were published in Korean characters in some of the publications and it was not until 1948 before all the letters were printed in Korean characters.

Finally, President Kim Il Sung saw to it that a climate of refraining from using Chinese characters would be established among people so that nationwide efforts could be made.

At that time, Chinese characters were in wide use in all aspects of social lives including politics, economics, culture and so on. Thus refraining from using Chinese characters was problematic in all sectors of society. What's more, it could be successful only if the entire Korean people, no matter they are literate in Chinese characters or not, were involved in the campaign to refrain from using the Chinese characters.

The President led all the people to be well-aware of the significance and importance of the campaign and turn out as one to refrain from using Chinese characters.

Thanks to the wise leadership of the President, there was an energetic campaign to refrain from using Chinese characters and as a result of this, 1949 could witness the abolition of Chinese characters and the establishment of unified writing standard of Korean characters.