Hyangchal — 950? AD, Korea

Hyangchal “tul”

Hyangchal — literally “vernacular letters” — borrowed the shapes of Chinese characters, but used them exclusively to represent the sounds of the Korean spoken language.  There are not very many documents in Hyangchal, but there are some poems written in Hyangchal which show that it was a strict syllabary, i.e. with no use of logograms.

Links: Wikipedia, A History of Korean Literature, The Korean Tradition of Translation: From the Primeval Period to the Modern Era