A comparative study of children’s Chinese character textbooks in Korea and China, with a focus on Yu Hap

Abstract

This study examines why and how Chinese characters spread into Korea. It subsequently conducts a comparative analysis of Korean and Chinese children’s textbooks with a focus on Yu Hap from the perspective of the acceptance and acculturation of Chinese characters. It also explores how commonly used the characters in Yu Hap are, and the text’s learning value as one of Korea’s children’s textbooks. Yu Hap is very significant as the first written language textbook published in Korea. A comparative analysis of the characters used in four children’s books published in Korea found that the characters in Yu Hap are very common, and the text has a high learning value. Approximately 50% of the characters in San Bai Qian and Yu Hap are the same, showing that both China and Korea had similar perceptions of the characters in common use. A very significant proportion of characters overlap in Basic Chinese Character for Educational Use, List of Common Words in Modern Chinese, and Yu Hap; this supports the idea that the same characters have continued to be used from ancient times to the present day.