Appendix:Korean script

This appendix explains characters written in the Korean script.

Prior to the invention of Hangul script in 1443, Korean was transcribed via various writing systems utilizing hanjas to represent either its semantic value or Korean phonemes. Three major types of scripts can be identified today - Idu as the most well known and best attested, Gugyeol as a glossing system from the Goryeo period (and likely before) as well as Hyangchal, which was used to record Old Korean folk poems.

Modern-day Korean is primarily written in hangul, the Korean alphabet, with hanja being reserved for technical terms, often used in an academic setting. South Korean middle and high school curriculum teaches around 1800 hanja characters, while the North abolished the use of hanja decades ago. (See below.)

Modern hangul comprises six vowels and fourteen "simple" consonants, in addition to a number of diphthongs and double consonants. Syllables are usually formed by combining one vowel character with one or two consonants ones:

See Wikipedia's article on Hangul for more details.

Modern Korean is written with spaces between most words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese. Korean punctuation marks are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns from top to bottom, right to left, but is now usually written in rows from left to right, top to bottom.

See Wikipedia's article on hanja for more details.

Modern day hanja transcribed words are sometimes used to clarify semantic value, such as eliminating the ambiguity of (mostly Sino-Korean) homophones, like in newspaper headlines. Academic writing still regularly makes use of hanja, given that the corpora of Sino-Korean words mostly contains technical terms.

Proper names are written in the parenthesises 『...』 or 「...」, while hanja annotations might be added in lexical dictionaries for further user information. In most contexts the use of a hanja derived term is obvious, even without its explicit addition.

North Korea fully abolished the use of hanja, except for advertising or decorative purposes and supposedly retains them in dictionaries and atlases.

Modern dictionaries don't use hanja for words derived from Classical Chinese, albeit with the hanja given added in some form in case the reader requires it.

Most Koreans have a official hanja name, while the hangul equivalent is used for everyday use. They consist of a family name (bongwan) and a given name, like 姓 (성, Seong) 孝利 (효리, Hyori). Given names written in pure Korean (sunurimal) are written in hangul as they lack a hanja equivalent, for example 하늘 (Haneul, “Heaven, Sky”). Official documents contain the name in both scripts.

Due to standardization efforts during Goryeo and Joseon eras, most native Korean placenames have been converted to hanja ones and the remainder were renamed to Classical Chinese toponyms during the Japanese occupation. Railway station signs give the station's name in hangul, hanja, and English, usually to assist Chinese/Japanese visitors rather than to clarify the stations meaning.