Hangul, the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean. It was created in the mid-15th century, and is now the official script of both North Korea and South Korea and is co-official in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Jilin Province, People's Republic of China. Hangul is a true alphabet of 24 consonant and vowel letters.