"Japan Promotes Hangul... Korean YouTuber's Controversial Statement: 'If You Want to Live Foolishly, Use Only Hangul'"

"In the 1920s, Japan took the lead in spreading Hangul."

A Korean YouTuber with 200,000 subscribers has sparked controversy online by claiming that it was Japan who led the spread of Hangul during the Japanese colonial period.

On the 3rd, a Japanese article supplied by the news service AFPBB to Yahoo News revisited past problematic remarks made by Yong Chan-woo, the operator of the YouTube channel 'Yonghosu.'

Mr. Yong Chan-woo, who claimed that Japan took the lead in promoting Hangul during the Japanese colonial period and stated that we should move away from Hangul and obtain information about the world through English.
[Photo by Yong Ho-soo, captured from YouTube]

AFPBB, operated by Creative Link, the Japanese subsidiary of the French news agency AFP, introduced a critical video titled "The 200,000 Subscriber YouTuber Claiming Japan Spread Hangul" on the 27th of last month.

In this video, Yong claimed that Japan spread Hangul in the 1920s, stating, "They gave the minimum knowledge to (the Koreans at the time) to use them as workers, to enslave them." He added, "We must move beyond Hunminjeongeum and be able to freely access information in the world through English."

Regarding Hangul, he said, "It is a phonetic script created by Sejong, the king of Joseon," and "Hangul is not our language. If we say Hangul is our language, then our people before Sejong become an uncivilized nation without any script." He further claimed, "When Sejong created Hangul, he said it was made 'for the young subjects.' 'Young' means stupid. It was made for stupid subjects. If you want to live stupidly, just use Hangul."

Yong said, "If Hunminjeongeum is installed as software, valuable thinking becomes extremely difficult. It's the same as not being able to edit videos on a PC running DOS," and added, "To produce valuable things in Korean, you need to know Chinese characters used by our ancestors."

As of 12 PM on the same day, the article had received about 670 comments, some of which agreed with Yong's claims and included content that disparaged Hangul or mocked Korea.