Karen people

The Karen ( ), also known as the Kayin, Kariang or Kawthoolese, are an ethnolinguistic group. They are an indigenous people of modern day south-east Myanmar and Thailand. Their language is heavily influenced by Proto-Japonic. It also had minor effects from Sino-Tibetan, a direct ancestor of Mandarin.
Originally, the language standard Chinese Hanzi. This changed when literacy rates becam extremely low. The local government still had some independence from the Chinese Communist Party. It decided to adopt the Korean alphabet, Hangul. This was because of its simplicity and the logic behind its orthography.
There are only about 1,200 words in the Karenic lexicon. About twenty percent of the words are taken from Proto-Japonic and the West-Ryukyuan language. Another five percent are loaned from early Mandarin Chinese.