Dividing Lines of Text in Korean

Korean words expressed in hangul are separated by spaces, as they are in Western languages. Some Korean-language applications allow the user to choose whether or not to break lines between hangul characters.

This example breaks lines only between words.

The example below breaks lines between individual hangul characters.

The standard rule for breaking lines between hangul characters, called geumchik, is very similar to the Japanese kinsoku rule—you can break lines between any two characters, with the following exceptions. A line of text cannot end with any leading characters. (Characters are shown with their hexadecimal code point for Korean standard code, KSC 5601.)

28 ( A1B0 A1BA A3DC
               
5B [ A1B2 A1BC A3FB
               
5C \ A1B4 A3A4    
               
7B { A1B6 A3A8    
               
A1AE A1B8 A3DB    


A line of text cannot begin with any following characters, listed below:

21 ! 7D } A1BD A3AC
               
25 % A1A2 A1C6 A3AE
               
29 ) A1AF A1C7 A3BA
               
2C , A1B1 A1C8 A3BB
               
2E . A1B3 A1C9 A3BF
               
3A : A1B5 A1CB A3DC
               
3B ; A1B7 A3A1 A3DD
               
3F ? A1B9 A3A5 A3FD
               
5D ] A1BB A3A9    


The geumchik rule defines three methods for dealing with following characters. The first method, the JalLaNaeGi method, breaks the line before the first character to the left of the following character, as shown below:

The MilEoNuGi method breaks the line after the following character and compresses the text that falls before it, as shown below:

The GeuNyangDuGi method extends the right margin slightly to accommodate the following character, as shown below:

This method can also extend the bottom margin.

There is no special category for overflow characters in Korean.