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.