Language

Korean is the official language in the whole of Korea. In South Korea, it is often called Hangungmal 한국말, or more formally, Hangugeo 한국어.  Within South Korea, there are many dialects in different regions. They are however, very closely similar, with the most distinguished difference being the use of stress while speaking. The standard language of South Korea is based on the dialect from Seoul.

It is said that the Korean language has alikeness to Japanese, and also contain many Chinese characters. An estimate of 1,300 Chinese characters are used on modern Korean. In the Korean language, there are 14 consonants and 6 vowels.

Honorifics are an essential part of the Korean language. They are used when addressing and speaking to one whom is elder, of superior status, or of new acquaintance. Korean honorifics used to only be hierarchical, but it slowly changed with the advancements and they are now widely used in the Korea society. Despite the use of honorifics being the culture of Korea, the country is becoming more westernised, and with changes in the attitudes of the citizens, the younger generation now do not see a need.

English, Chinese and Japanese are taught during the Primary and Secondary educations, however, these three languages are not widely used in South Korea.

Here is a short children's story on the language:

A long, long time ago a man was sitting in his room, thinking to create a new language for the newly independent country. He wanted something simple in opposition to the complexity of Hanja (Chinese characters) and the three different alphabets of Japan.


He thought and thought but couldn't come up with anything; hoping to find some consolation from the night sky, he motioned to open the window, but he heard that there was a lot of rain falling outside. He looked at the window.


In this window he saw some simple, yet powerful shapes to unify the broken Korea and get rid of illiteracy. And looking at this window, King Se-Jong invented Korean.

Visit these websites to learn more about basic korean :

http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com/

Click on the tab "Beginner Korean" to learn more about the language.

http://rki.kbs.co.kr/learn_korean/lessons/e_index.htm

Learn basic phrases for different situations

References for this post:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2800.htm 
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/322280/South-Korea/281336/Languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language 
http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com/Language-Story.html