koreanlit1-3, Exercise 2: Idu

Model answer:

Idu ("official's reading") was a way of writing Korean with Chinese characters. Characters carried both meaning and sound: some represented native Korean words or grammatical elements, others Chinese loanwords; a character used only for its sound lost its Chinese meaning. Korean word order was followed, and Chinese pronunciation was only "approximately" followed.

It arose in the Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE to 668 CE); the article says it was developed by Buddhist monks, without a source. It was used for official documents and the examinations from 958 to 1894 CE, to read Chinese government documents, to teach Classical Chinese and to translate Chinese texts such as the Ming legal code.

Meanings: broad, several systems of writing Korean with Chinese characters, including hyangchal (vernacular poetry) and gugyeol; narrow, only the system developed in Goryeo (918 to 1392).

Link to Chapter 2: the hyangga were written in hyangchal, which the article places in the broad family of idu, so they use the same idea of Chinese characters spelling Korean sounds and meanings. That is why they are hard to read.

Source: Wikipedia, Idu script (a stub).