As a possible member of the Altaic language family and thus possibly related to Mongolian, the present Korean language is far removed from Chinese. It evolved from the time of Korean unification in the seventh century.

Like Japanese, Korean is sensitive to social positions, which reflects the importance that Koreans traditionally place on giving and receiving respect. Koreans use different verb forms to indicate the inferior, equal, or superior status of one speaker to another.

Though entirely distinct in sound and sentence structure, Korean has many Chinese influences. About half of Korean words are derived from Chinese, and Koreans used Chinese characters for writing into the 15th century, when they invented a phonetic alphabet called hangul. Hangul's 40 symbols are extremely accurate in representing spoken sounds.

About 72 million people speak Korean—45 million in South Korea, 24 million in North Korea, and more than 2 million in China. It is the official language of both North and South Korea, although there are a few minor differences in spelling and word choice.