韓語, or Korean, is the official language of both South Korea and North Korea. It is spoken by approximately 80 million people worldwide. The language uses a unique writing system called Hangul, which was created in the 15th century to improve literacy among the common people. Korean is classified as a language isolate, meaning it has no known relation to other language families. It features a subject-object-verb (SOV) sentence structure and has various levels of politeness, reflecting the importance of social hierarchy in Korean culture.