How long has Korean language being around? Was Chinese used in Korea before Korean appeared?

Answer 1

This web site is good for this question:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/korean.htm

Below is some more information.

Chinese was likely included in Korean language. In the fifteenth century, King Sejong of the Yi Dynasty commissioned the development of a phonetically based script for Korean. Until that time, Korean had been written with Chinese characters, and literacy was restricted to a small, educated elite.

Note that this fact does NOT accomodate the question about spoken language.

Kuga (Korean) has been classified as a language isolate, but there are many theories proposed to explain it's origin

There are arguments for the inclusion of Uralic languages (Hungarian and Finnish) and Japanese in the macro family of languages of the area, which include the Altaic languages of central Asia, a family that includes Turkish, Mongolian, and the Tungusic (for example, Manchu) languages of Siberia. Although not definitively proven, this affiliation is accepted by most Korean linguists and deemed likely by Western linguists as well.

The competing theory associates Korean with the Dravidian languages of southern India, or to Austronesian languages.

http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=76
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/march/Korean.html

Answer 2

Well before I start my answer, the above information is half-right, half-incorrect. Yes, Korean similar to the Korean used today first appeared during King Sejong's reign in the 15th century. However I have no idea what he's talking about as "Kuga", as Korean is called "han-geul" (translated as Korean writing).

Before King Sejong "invented" Korean, Chinese characters were used to substitute for the writing portion of the language. Speaking however, is the same as it is today. It was just the writing that needed a lot of tweaking, only the elite could learn and fully write in the complicated Chinese.

I say King Sejong "invented" Korean, but in reality, he just came up with the idea to invent a simpler, more sound writing system for his people. The people who actually invented Korean writing were a bunch of scholars he gathered from around Korea, solely for the purpose of inventing a new language.

Korean, as a language, is registered in UNESCO as being a uniquely invented language, one of the only invented languages in the world.

Hope that helps!