koreanlit1-3, Exercise 1: Literary Chinese

Model answer:

Per Wikipedia, Literary Chinese: it "represented the only known common form of writing for a long time" in the countries that used it. Adoption "came mainly from diplomatic and cultural ties with China", with conquest, colonisation and migration playing smaller roles. It served as an "international auxiliary language" for civil administration and scholarly communication.

What the article does not say about Korea: how Koreans read Chinese (hundok, gugyeol appears only as a "See also" link), idu (not mentioned), the civil service examinations in Korea, or when Chinese writing declined in Korea. It says only in general that speakers of non-Chinese languages "have similarly abandoned Literary Chinese" in favour of local vernaculars. The page is tagged "needs more citations".

Chapter 1's article (Korean literature) adds the Korean figure: "For much of Korea's 1,500 years of literary history, it was written in Hanja."