Hangul was created in 1443 CE by King Sejong the Great in an attempt to increase literacy by serving as a complement (or alternative) to the logographic Sino-Korean Hanja, which had been used by Koreans as its primary script to write the Korean language since as early as the Gojoseon period (spanning more than a thousand years and ending around 108 BCE), along with the usage of Classical Chinese. As a result, Hangul was initially denounced and disparaged by the Korean educated class. The script became known as eonmun and became the primary Korean script only in the decades after Korea's independence from Japan in the mid-20th century.