Korean language

Korean (한국어/조선말) is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers. The genealogical classification of the Korean language is debated. Some linguists place it in the Altaic language family, while others consider it to be a language isolate. It is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax.

In South Korea, the language is called Hangungmal (한국말; 韓國말), or more formally, Hangugeo (한국어; 韓國語) or Gugeo (국어; 國語). In North Korea and Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China, the language is called Chosŏnmal (조선말; with hanja: 朝鮮말), or more formally, Chosŏnŏ (조선어; 朝鮮語).

In mainland China, following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term Cháoxiǎnyǔ has normally been used to refer to the language spoken in North Korea and Yanbian, while Hánguóyǔ is used to refer to the language spoken in South Korea.
It is known that the word 'Korean' was derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be first dynasty known to western countries. In ancient times, the languages of the Korean peninsula were written using Chinese characters, using hyangchal or idu. Such systems were not popular because hanja was regulated to use by the ruling elite, and is not easily matched to the Korean spoken language. Its use is now limited to 1,800 characters taught at the high school level.

Korean was formerly written using Hanja, a set of borrowed Chinese characters pronounced in the Korean way. In the 15th century a national writing system, currently called Hangul, was developed by Sejong the Great, the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty.
Korean is now mainly written in Hangul. Hanja may be mixed in to write Sino-Korean words. While South Korean schools still teach 1,800 hanja characters, North Korea abolished the use of hanja decades ago.

Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese. Korean punctuation marks are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns from top to bottom, right to left, but is now mostly written in rows from left to right, top to bottom.

The Korean language used in the North and the South exhibits differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary. Words that are written the same way may be pronounced differently, while some words spelled differently by the North and the South may have the same pronunciation.

When transcribing place names, North Korea tends to use the pronunciation in the original language more than South Korea, which often uses the pronunciation in English.

Information: Wikipedia