Hangul for Music

South Korea could be a leading adopter of the ThumMusic System, for two reasons: South Korea’s relentless obsession with education and its experience with (and reverence for) hangul.

Hangul is a written phonemic script organized into syllabic blocks which represents the sounds of spoken Korean. It was developed as an alternative to the use of Chinese hanja characters, of which there were so many – nearly 50,000 altogether – that attaining functional literacy required a huge investment of time. Korea being a poor country then, the vast majority of Koreans could not afford this huge investment in hanja literacy, so Korea’s literacy rate was very low.

Hangul's ease-of-learning reduced the cost of attaining literacy by so much that a bright Korean-speaking student could learn to read and write in a single day, and by a not-so-bright student in a single week. It has been described as being "the world's best alphabet" and "the most scientific system of writing” (see Writing Right, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning science author Jared Diamond).

Hangul’s democratization of literacy was adamantly opposed by Korea’s intellectual elites, which correctly saw hangul as threatening their monopoly on the benefits of literacy. Hangul was recognized as Korea’s official written script after WWII, and since then, hangul has become nearly universal in Korea, with hanja rapidly disappearing.

Hangul’s impact on Korean culture has been profound. Using hangul, Korea rapidly attained the highest literacy rate in the world – an important factor in its emergence as a top-tier industrial nation. Korea is so proud of hangul that it celebrates Hangul Day every year. Korea’s new capital, Sejong City, was named after King Sejong the Great, whose ‘greatest’ accomplishment is considered to be the development of hangul.

Thus, Korean society is well-disposed towards the idea that the use of a non-traditional symbol system can dramatically improve learning outcomes, as the ThumMusic System is poised to do. Positioning the ThumMusic System in Korea as “hangul for music” could help lead to rapid success there.

The second reason why the ThumMusic System could take off in South Korea is its absolute obsession with education, delivered in large part through private cram schools, on which Korean parents spend US$15 billion per year – the world’s highest per capita investment in private education. As one leading cram school entrepreneur stated, “The most important thing for students is time, so the quality of educational services is critical – they have to learn as much as possible in a short space of time.” In the highly-competitive cram school market, the school which first adopted the ThumMusic System could gain a significant advantage.

Together, these two circumstances could lead South Korea could be a leading adopter of the Thummer and ThumMusic System.

It happens that Korean manufacturing giant Hyundai recently acquired Kurzweil Music Systems and appointed Ray Kurzweil to be its Chief Strategy Officer, to “build Kurzweil Music Systems into one of the largest music instruments brands in the world,” according to Kurzweil.

Interesting,yes? ;-)