A Comparative Study of the Chinese Characters education in Korea and China

한·중 한자교육 비교

The Hanja used in Korean are traditional Chinese characters, but what Chinese people use now is simplified characters. So, there are differences in pronunciation and meaning between the characters used by Korean and Chinese. More than 70% of the Korean language vocabulary derived from or were influenced by hanja. For the inheritance and development of traditional culture,and for the communication among countries of the Chinese characters cultural circle in Northeast Asia, should we build up an authentic Chinese education system. But the government hasn't pay much attention to this work, and the government's policy can't implement the efficient education. Consequently, in these days, there are more and more Korean people who are functionally illiterate in Chinese. Recently, proficiency tests of Chinese characters are expected to promote the development of Chinese education. But, most Koreans' motives for Chinese study are usually to pass the college entrance exam or to compete for jobs. However, after passing the test, the motive for studying gradually fade away. It is the basic problem faced by Korean Chinese character education. Since the 1950s, various character education methods have been studied in China, the research results were appliedin their textbooks and other materials. Therefore, a well-organized and efficient learning-by-step education system was built up. At present, China's literacy education in the textbooks utilizes a range of methods including revisional centralized and distributed. Unfortunately, there is still one shortcoming worthy of concerns: how to solve the problems due to the simplification of traditional Chinese characters? Is it possible to revive traditional Chinese characters? Before adopting the results of research on China's literacy education and applying them to our character education, we should consider our specific situation carefully. Adopting the research results with cautious review and objective criticism should have a positive impact on Korean Chinese character education.