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The Korean language's origins are a bit obscure and the topic of scholarly debate. The language is mainly spoken on the Korean peninsula. There are roughly 62 million Korean speakers between South and North Korea (approx. 20 million in North and approx. 42 million in South). Korean is considered an isolate language, with theories for and against Korean being linked to the Altaic languages of Central Asia (Mongolian, Tungusic, and Turkish) and Uralic languages (Hungarian and Finnish); there are others, but those seem to be getting the most attention at this time. Regardless of language origin, Korean has been somewhat heavily influence by Chinese over time.
The modern Korean writing system, Han'gul, came about in 1443, during the reign of King Sejong; before Han'gul, Korean used complex Chinese characters, but due to the difference between Chinese and Korean, the Chinese characters weren't great at denoting Korean sounds.
To learn more about the Korean language, Click Here and Here.
To hear the 1st paragraph of the 1st book of the 1st Korean translation, Click Here.
To hear the 1st paragraph of the 1st book of the 2nd Korean translation - coming soon.
The Korean translations are a growing number of Potter translations that actually have 2 translations w/ 2 different translators. The publisher, Moonhak Soochup Publishing published both of them.
The 1st translation was translated by Hye-won Kim (books 1 - 4) and In-ja Choi (books 4 - 7), and features the art of Mary GrandPre and later Jonny Duddle. The books were released in both hard and softcover, with softcover being MUCH easier to find. Importantly, each softcover book was released in at least 2 volumes - there are NO single volume softcover Korean books.
The 2nd translation was translated by Donghyuk Kang. Confusingly, the publisher decided to release this 2nd translation with jonny Duddle cover art as well - with the main difference (beside text block) being that the 2nd translation has "Harry Potter" in shiny Han'gul on the Duddle covers (해리 포터와 ), while the 1st translation has "Harry Potter" written in Latin lettering. Like the 1st translation, there are hard and softcover editions available, with the softcover again being the most common. And like the 1st, there are no single volume softcover books of the 2nd Korean translation.
해리 포터와 마법사의 돌
Each volume has it's own ISBN, so 1 book will have several ISBNs
1) 9788983920683
2) 9788983920690
1) 9788983920928
2) 9788983920935
3) 9788983920942
4) 9788983920959
해리 포터와 비밀의 방
1) 9788983920706
2) 9788983920713
해리 포터와 아즈카반의 죄수
1) 9788983920720
2) 9788983920737
해리 포터와 불사조 기사단
I have only 1st part of the 5th book - I don't plan on completing this set as of right now, so I doubt I will put the other parts here.
1) 9788983921437
해리 포터와 혼혈 왕자
Importantly, on the softcover books, the part # is on the front cover, so you'll know which part(s) you have of these books.
1) 9788983921963
2) 9788983921970
3) 9788983921987
4) 9788983921994
ISBN: 9788989708582
ISBN: 9788983925558
Both hardcover editions of the 1st translation have all 7 books published. As mentioned above, the Hardcover editions are harder to find, and when found, the price tends to be reflect that difficulty.
The 2nd translation, as mentioned above, looks a lot like the 1st translation with the Duddle cover, with only minor differences. Just like with the 1st translation softcovers, you have to make sure to buy all the volumes of the book.
ISBN: 978893927743
Hardcover
ISBN: 9788983927620
The softcover of this edition are much smaller than the 1st translation softcover editions; they also have part numbers on the front - notice the hardcover only the left (of course) doesn't have that because the hardcover of the 1st book is only 1 part. And, the 2nd part of the softcover is missing - I honestly don't know where I got the 1st volume of the softcover. lol
ISBN: 9788959760435
The Beedle the Bard comes from 2008, and like the rest of the Korean Potter translations, was published by Moonhak Soochup Publishing. The Korean Beedle book took me a while to find. I'm unsure of later editions of this book.