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This numeral is sometimes considered unlucky because 사(四)(sa) is homophonous with 사(死)(sa), the hanja for "death". This is common throughout East Asia.
In modern Korean, numbers are usually written in Arabic numerals.
The Korean language has two sets of numerals: a native set of numerals inherited from Old Korean, and a Sino-Korean set which was borrowed from Middle Chinese in the first millennium C.E.
For many terms, a native numeral has a quantifying sense, whereas a Sino-Korean numeral has a sense of labeling.
세반(班)(se ban, “three school classes”, native numeral)
삼반(班)(sam ban, “Class Number Three”, Sino-Korean numeral)
When used in isolation, native numerals refer to objects of that number and are used in counting and quantifying, whereas Sino-Korean numerals refer to the numbers in a more mathematical sense.
하나만더주세요(hana-man deo juse-yo, “Could you give me just one more, please”, native numeral)
일더하기일은?(il deohagi ir-eun?, “What's one plus one?”, Sino-Korean numeral)
While older stages of Korean had native numerals up to the thousands, native numerals currently exist only up to ninety-nine, and Sino-Korean is used for all higher numbers. There is also a tendency—particularly among younger speakers—to uniformly use Sino-Korean numerals for the higher tens as well, so that native numerals such as 일흔 (ilheun, “seventy”) or 아흔 (aheun, “ninety”) are becoming less common.