hanja

Hanja, or hanja in Korean, refers to Chinese characters used in Korea. They were borrowed from Chinese writing and used to write Korean-Sino vocabulary as well as proper names and historical and scholarly texts. In modern Korean, Hangul is the primary script, while Hanja is used selectively for disambiguation, stylistic purposes, or in certain domains such as scholarly works, legal documents, and newspaper headlines.

Historically, Hanja was the dominant writing system in Korea. From the early centuries of the Three Kingdoms, Chinese characters were adapted to represent Korean grammar and vocabulary through systems such as Idu, Hyangchal, and gugyeol. After Hangul's invention in the 15th century, Hangul gradually displaced Hanja in everyday writing, though Hanja remained essential for scholarly, administrative, and formal writing. During the 20th century, especially under Japanese rule, Hangul was suppressed, but Hanja continued to be used in official contexts. In contemporary South Korea, Hanja teaching persists but is not required; a prescribed list of commonly used characters is taught and used in some media, business, and personal names. In North Korea, usage is much more limited and largely confined to education and historical texts.

Technically, Hanja characters are encoded in Unicode and in national standards such as KS X 1001 in Korea, alongside Hangul. The study of Hanja is often linked to the acquisition of Sino-Korean vocabulary and the ability to read classical Chinese texts. For many readers, knowledge of Hanja improves comprehension of official documents and literary works that rely on variant readings and homographs.