Korean Revised Version (Hangul)
ko
The 개역한글판 (Korean Old Version) is a revision of the first complete translation of the Bible into Korean, originally published in 1911. The 1911 translation was the result of collaborative work by Protestant missionaries and Korean scholars during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, at a crucial moment in the history of the Korean peninsula. The public domain edition used on this platform represents one of the later revisions that consolidated this version as the standard Bible of Korean Protestants for much of the twentieth century.
Methodologically, the translation was produced based on the original Hebrew and Greek texts, with consultation of English and Chinese translations that served as intermediate references in some cases. The translators faced the significant challenge of creating a theological terminology in Korean, a language then receiving for the first time the concepts of biblical Christianity in their systematic form. The choice of Hangul, the native Korean alphabet, over the Chinese characters (Hanja) traditionally used by the literate elite, was a democratizing decision that made the text accessible to common people.
The historical context of this translation is particularly significant: it was published and disseminated during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), when Korean language and identity faced assimilationist pressures. The Korean Bible thus became not only a religious text, but also an instrument of cultural and linguistic preservation, contributing to the extraordinary growth of Christianity in Korea throughout the twentieth century, especially after the division of the peninsula and the establishment of the Republic of Korea in the south.
The 개역한글판 in its historical edition is in the public domain, allowing its free use for study, digital distribution, and reproduction. This status ensures continued access to one of the most influential biblical versions in the history of the Korean Church, which shaped the faith, religious language, and Christian culture of generations of Koreans, maintaining its historical and devotional value for contemporary readers.