Korean language and computers


The writing system of the Korean language is a syllabic alphabet of character parts organized into character blocks representing syllables. The character parts cannot be written from left to right on the computer, as in many Western languages. Every possible syllable in Korean would have to be rendered as syllabic blocks by a font, or each character part would have to be encoded separately. Unicode has both options; the character parts ㅎ and ㅏ, and the combined syllable 하, are encoded.

Character encoding

In RFC 1557, a method known as ISO-2022-KR for seven-bit encoding of Korean characters in email was described. Where eight bits are allowed, EUC-KR encoding is preferred. These two encodings combine US-ASCII with the South Korean standard KS X 1001:1992. Another character set, KPS 9566, is used in North Korea.
The international Unicode standard contains special characters for the Korean language in the Hangul phonetic system. Unicode supports two methods. The method used by Microsoft Windows is to have each of the 11,172 syllable combinations as code and a preformed font character. The other method encodes letters and lets the software combine them correctly. The Windows method requires more font memory but allows better shapes, since it is complicated to create stylistically correct combinations.
Another possibility is stacking a sequence of medial and a sequence of final or a Middle Korean pitch mark on top of the sequence of initial if the font has medial and final jamo with zero-width spacing inserted to the left of the cursor or caret, thus appearing in the right place below the initial. If a syllable has a horizontal medial, the initial will probably appear further left in a complete syllable than in preformed syllables due to the space that must be reserved for a vertical medial, making aesthetically poor what may be the only way to display Middle Korean hangul text without resorting to images, romanization, replacement of obsolete jamo or non-standard encodings. However, most current fonts do not support this.
The Unicode standard also has attempted to create a unified CJK character set which can represent Chinese and the Japanese and Korean derivatives of this script through Han unification, which does not discriminate by language or region in rendering Chinese characters if the typographic traditions have not resulted in major differences in what a character looks like. Han unification has been criticized.

Hangul type, Korean typewriters

While the first Korean typewriter is unclear, the first moa-sseugi style typewriter is thought to be first invented by Korean-American gyopo Lee Won-Ik in 1914, where he modified a Smith Premier 10 typewriter's type into Hangul. Alongside Lee Won-ik's, Horace Grant Underwood's 1913 US-patented Hangul type, the Underwood, and another Korean-American Kim Jun-Sung's Hangul type are also brought up when discussing the first Moa-Sugi type.
In 1929, the first Dubeolsik typewriter was made by Song Ki-Ju, a student studying abroad in the US, gaining attention from the Donga ilbo; however, it no longer exists. In 1934 he showcased another type, which was a modification of the Underwood portable. Song's 1934 typewriter is stored in the Hangul museum as the oldest existing Korean typewriter. The invention led to the development of other typewriters in 1945 by Kim Joon Sung and 1950 by Kong Byung Woo.
In 1949, eye doctor Kong Byung-Woo made the first practical Hangul type able to write both in Moa-Sugi and horizontally.

Modern text input

On a Korean computer keyboard, text is typically entered by pressing a key for the appropriate jamo; the operating system creates each composite character on the fly. Depending on the Input method editor and keyboard layout, double consonants can be entered by holding the shift key. When all jamo making up a syllabic block have been entered, the user may initiate a conversion to hanja using a keyboard shortcut or interface button; South Korean keyboards have a key for this. Subsequent semi-automated hanja conversion is supported in varying degrees by word processors.
When using a keyboard with another language, most operating systems require the user to type with an original Korean keyboard layout; the most common is Dubeolsik. In other languages, such as Japanese, text can be entered on non-native keyboards with romanization.
Operating systems like Linux support romaja input; typing "seonggye" results in. In this configuration, ㄲ is obtained by "gg" rather than. This allows keying "jasanGun" to obtain, instead of keying "jasangun".

Before Korean division

Korean text input is related to Korean typewriters before computers. according to Jang Bong Seon, Horace Grant Underwood made a Korean typewriter during the first decade of the 20th century. In 1927, Song Ki Joo invented the first Dubeolsik typewriter in Chicago.

After division

South Korea originally had a Nebeolsik standard, but Dubeolsik became standard in 1985.

Hanja

Some Korean fonts do not include hanja, and word processors do not allow a user to specify which font to use as a fallback for any hanja in a text; each hanja sequence must be manually formatted for a desired font.

Pitch marks and vertical text

is supported poorly by HTML and most word processors. This is not an issue for modern Korean, which is usually written horizontally; until the second half of the 20th century, however, Korean was often written vertically. Fifteenth-century texts written in hangul had pitch marks to the left of syllables which are included in Unicode, although current fonts do not support them.

Programs

Programs designed for Korean language-related use include:
Hangul characters are detailed in several parts of Unicode:
shipped with fonts from Hanyang Information and Communication, which map obsolete Hangul characters with Unicode's Private Use Areas. Despite the use of PUAs instead of dedicated code points, Hanyang's mapping was the most popular way to represent obsolete Hangul in South Korea in 2007. With its Hangul 2010, however, Hancom deprecated Hanyang PUA code and began representing obsolete Hangul characters with Unicode Hangul jamo.

Sort order

The 11172 characters in the Hangul Syllables block in Unicode follow the South Korean sort order. North Korea later submitted a proposal to rearrange the characters to follow its own order, but it was rejected.
The sort order, including obsolete letters, defined in the South Korean national standard KS X 1026-1 is:

; Initial consonants