For those of you not aware, there is a whole genre of Korean historical fiction about the invention of Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, because the real-life story behind the invention of Hangeul is “an incredibly sophisticated and super-secret linguistics project carried out centuries before the field of linguistics was actually invented.”
It was also revolutionary in that it made literacy accessible to commoners who didn’t have the resources to learn Chinese.
This is a story that hardly needs dramatization, but there is nonetheless a lot of dramatization, and I am such a nerd I will watch any dramatized version of the invention of Hangeul.
So, that said, TREE WITH DEEP ROOTS is more hardcore about the invention of Hangeul than THE KING’S LETTERS although TREE WITH DEEP ROOTS is older.
THE KING’S LETTERS has King Sejong secretly teaming up with Buddhist monks.
In TREE WITH DEEP ROOTS his work is organized into cells of scholars who don’t know the whole scope of the project, and there is a scene involving a dissection (which would have been sacreligious in a Confucian country back then) so he can diagram the anatomy of the mouth and throat.