On Buton Island in eastern Indonesia, schoolchildren scrawl the distinctive circles and lines of Hangul script on their notebooks, but the language they are learning is not Korean. It is their Indigenous Cia-Cia tongue. The language of the Cia-Cia ethnic group has no written form, and the syllable-based tongue does not readily translate to the Latin alphabet often used to transcribe Indonesia's national language. However, the Korean Hangul script, developed in the 15th century, shares a syllable-based system that has made it an unusual tool in the effort to preserve and transmit the language of the approximately 80,000 Cia-Cia people. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES ARRANGED IN SEQUENCES