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Its Spoken Language Fading, Buton Tries a Script From Seoul That Has Global Ambitions SORAWOLIO, Indonesia -- In an elementary school here on the remote Indonesian island of Buton, a teacher named Abidin recently began to show students how to write their endangered native language -- in the Korean alphabet. Mr. Abidin carefully copied some Korean letters from a textbook onto the blackboard and asked his fourth-grade class what they spelled in their Cia-Cia tongue, a Malayo-Polynesian language related to others spoken across Indonesia. "I eat fish," they replied in unison. The students know little about Korea, 3,500 miles north...

"Indonesian Tribe adopts Hangul" I kid you not (and it kind of makes sense). But, something about this story strikes me as a bit perverse. As in, it feels as if the South Korean government is taking advantage of this poor innocent Indonesian tribe.

Oldest Movable Metal Hangul Type Found Scholars say they have identified the earliest metal type in Hangul, the Korean alphabet. The movable type dates back to the mid-15th century. The National Museum of Korea said Thursday the museum recently rearranged the 752 oldest out of hundreds of thousands of letters in its collection. Among them, 30 letters were probably used for the “Neungeomgyeong Eunhae” published in 1461 during the time of King Se-jo, a Korean translation of the Shurangama Sutra Buddhist text, and for the “Dusieeonhae”, a translated poety book published in 1481. Movable Hangul metal type probably dating...

OK, I have a strange question. In my job search I was contacted by a recruiter who believes I am an excellent fit for a position that sounds very exciting. But there is a catch. They want someone who is fluent in Korean. He advised me a strong candidate will be given the opportunity for company paid language training, but I was wondering. How tough is Korean to learn? I studied German and some Latin, but nothing anything like this before.