Today, Hanja are not used to write native Korean words, which are always rendered in Hangul and even words of Chinese origin— Hanja-eo ( 한자어, 漢字語 )—are written with the Hangul alphabet most of the time, with the corresponding Chinese character often written next to it to prevent confusion with other characters or words with the same phonetics.

Koreans began using hanja during the Gojoseon period, so 400 BCE already. Korean Hanja is another term coined for the traditional writing system in Korea. It’s generally called Hanja but sometimes called Korean Hanja since other countries like China and Japan use similar writing systems.

Just like the term hanja means hàn zì (the Chinese word for Chinese characters), so does the Japanese term kanji. If you wrote any of them as a traditional Chinese character, they would all look like 漢字. In other words, hanja and kanji both mean the Chinese character writing system, with hanja in use in Korea and kanji in Japan.

Although it is not mandatory for you to learn hanja to manage a visit and life in Korea, as well as to speak the Korean language, learning some hanja characters will help you tremendously. You see, even today approximately 60% of the Korean language is made up of words of Chinese origin.