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King Sejong of the Joseon dynasty. Among other scientific achievements, he is credited with creation of the modern Korean writing system, Hangul.

Hangul is actually quite a cool system, and much more readable than you might think. Although at first glance it looks similar to the Chinese and Japanese systems that involve thousands of unique characters, Hangul really is an alphabet. Each character contains up to four symbols that describe the beginning, middle, and end of a single syllable (I thought it was three, but I have been corrected... I'm unclear on how the fourth symbol works). While I didn't put in enough time before the trip to memorize Hangul (I really should have, it would have been worthwhile and I recommend doing so to any future travelers), I was able to master a few signs with the help of a reference book.