Book Reviews 239 Reviewer’sAddress 445 Kaiolu St., Apt. 204 Honolulu, HI 96815 Gari K. Ledyard, TheKoreanlanguagereformof1446. (Republic of Korea, Academy of the Korean Language, Special publications, 2.) Seoul: Sin’gu Munhwasa, 1998. Pp. 483. Hb W 25,000. Reviewed by Young-Key Kim-Renaud The present volume (hereafter KLR) originates as the 1966 Berkeley dissertation of its author, Gari Ledyard (hereafter L). This work, which has long been required reading for students of the Korean writing system, has now finally been published on the initiative of the Republic of Korea’s National Academy of the Korean Language. Like the preceding volume in the Academy’s special publication series, King Sejong the Great: The Light of Fifteenth-Century Korea (Kim-Renaud 1998), the publication of KLR commemorated the 600th year of the birth of King Sejong (1397–1450), fourth monarch of the Choso ˘n Kingdom or Yi dynasty (1392–1910) and inventor of the Korean alphabet. This alphabet, now known as han’gu ˘l ‘Han [Korean/great/unique] script’, but originally called hunmincho ˘ng’u ˘m ‘correct sounds for the instruction of the people’ (hereafter HC), was proclaimed in 1446. The proclamation document, also called hunmincho ˘ng’u ˘m, was a kind of primer for learning the alphabet as well, with explanatory treatises and examples called hunmin cho ˘ng’u ˘mhaerye ‘explanations and examples of the correct sounds for the instruction of the people’ (hereafter HCH). These texts, called “the Haerye version”, re-emerged miraculously in 1940 after having disappeared for centuries. In 1997 UNESCO voted to include them in its Memory of the World register, probably the only linguistic treatises so honored. This recognition owes much to Ledyard’s work. Despite much vibrant research since 1940, no comprehensive study of the Korean writing system by any specialist was available for non-Korean readers until 1997, when The Korean alphabet: Its history and structure (Kim-Renaud 1997a) was published. Almost all articles in that volume reference Ledyard’s dissertation, and the need to see that work in print became even more palpable. KLR comprises six chapters with introduction, bibliography, and index. The introduction discusses past scholarship on han’gul, especially by Western scholars, and presents a succinct summary and objective of the book. For L, the