Hangul scholar and Korean-language activist (pen name Oesol)
| Life | 1894 ~ 1970 |
| Era | 근현대 |
| Clan | 경주 최씨 |
Choe Hyeon-bae was a Korean-language scholar from Ulsan; his pen name was Oesol. Continuing the work of Ju Si-gyeong, he worked to establish a system for Korean grammar, and, active in the Korean Language Society, took part in enacting the Unified Korean Orthography of 1933.
In 1942 he was arrested by the Japanese in the Korean Language Society Incident and imprisoned. After liberation he served as director of the editorial bureau of the Ministry of Education, leading the compilation of Korean-language textbooks and the Hangul-only movement, and served as professor and vice-president of Yonsei University and chairman of the Korean Language Society.
His major works include Urimalbon (Korean Grammar, 1937), Han'geulgal (Studies on Hangul, 1940), and The Way to the Regeneration of the Korean Nation (1926), and he contributed greatly to refining Korean grammatical terminology into pure native Korean. In 1962 he received the Order of Merit for National Foundation.