Introduction of literary Chinese to Korea
There is traditionally no accepted date for when literary Chinese (한문; 漢文; hanmun) written in Chinese characters (한자; 漢字; hanja) … See more

Because many different Hanja—and thus, many different words written using Hanja—often share the same sounds, two distinct Hanja words (Hanjaeo) may be spelled identically in the See more

Each Hanja character is pronounced as a single syllable, corresponding to a single composite character in Hangul. The pronunciation of Hanja in Korean is by no means identical to … See more

Each Hanja is composed of one of 214 radicals plus in most cases one or more additional elements. The vast majority of Hanja use the additional elements to indicate the sound of … See more

To aid in understanding the meaning of a character, or to describe it orally to distinguish it from other characters with the same pronunciation, … See more

South
South Korean primary schools ceased the teaching of Hanja in elementary schools in the 1970s, although … See more

A small number of characters were invented by the Koreans themselves. These characters are called gukja (국자, 國字, literally 'national characters'). Most of them are for proper names (place-names and people's names) but some refer to Korean-specific … See more