[KS] "The Origins of the Korean Alphabet"

[King, Ross]

Dear Colleagues: 

Our colleague Professor Kim Juwon at the SNU Linguistics Department has kindly sent me a copy of this thesis and has also rather complicated the discussion around the author's identity. 

Some of you might remember I had hazarded a guess of 정계원 as the hangul for the author's name, but Frank Hoffmann and others reckoned it to be 정기원 and matched this name with a plausible person. 

But according to Professor Kim,  the author is more likely 정계원(鄭啓元, female), not 정기원, who was an instructor
at 경성여자고보. He also points out that the attention to Sanskrit in her discussion of the origins owes to the fact that she wrote her thesis before 1940 when the Hunmin chong'um haerye-bon was discovered. 

The bibliographic information again:

The Origins Of The Korean Alphabet;
A Dissertation presented, to the faculty of Princeton University
in Candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
by Kei Won Chung, 1938


Table Of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Composition of the Yi-do
Chapter 11 The Development of the Korean Alphabet
Chapter 111 The Source of the Korean Alphabet
Chapter IV Sanskrit through Buddhism
Chapter V The Seal Character Theory
Chapter VI The Aramaic-Mongolian Theory
Chapter Vll The Theory of Sanskrit Origin
Chapter Vlll Expansion of the Sanskrit Alphabet
Chapter IX Consultation with Whang Ch!an
Conclusion


Cheers,

Ross King
Professor of Korean and Head of Department
Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
Asian Centre, 1871 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
vox: 604-822-2835
fax: 604-822-8937
ross.king at ubc.ca