Absolutely not! Adapting a writing script is an act of deep cultural appreciation, not appropriation. Writing systems have always crossed borders and cultures to serve human communication; today, more than 3,000 spoken languages adapted or adopted the Latin alphabet.

Sejonggeul (Hunminjeongeum) and Hangeul are no exception. A prominent example is the Cia-Cia tribe of Indonesia, who adopted Hangeul in 2009 because the Latin alphabet could not accurately capture their native pronunciation[1][2]. They even published a Hangeul-based Cia-Cia dictionary in late 2021. Furthermore, regional governments in the Solomon Islands launched initiatives to adopt the system in 2012[3][4][5], and linguist Hsu Tsao-te proposed Taiwanese Hangul in 1987 to resolve challenges in Taiwanese Hokkien[6].

In addition, the Korean people themselves originally adopted Hanzi (Chinese characters) in the 2nd century B.C.E., later adapting it into their own Hanja writing system by the 6th century C.E. This was not cultural theft, and the Koreans did not commit cultural appropriation. Writing systems belong to all of humanity.

Just as the ancient Chinese likely took pride in seeing another culture value and adopt their script, sharing a brilliant phonetic tool like Sejonggeul is an act of universal unity, education, and mutual respect. Writing systems are dynamic tools designed to connect humanity, and utilizing King Sejong's universal principles for Philippine languages honors his original vision of breaking down barriers to literacy.