What is Hangul.io?
Hangul.io is a browser-based editor and converter for Korean HWP and HWPX documents. Open a file — by drag-and-drop, disk picker, or URL — edit it inline in a Word-style editor, and export to Markdown, HTML, or Word (.doc). No Hancom Office required. Runs anywhere Python does.
Open the editor API for developers
Why
HWP is the de-facto Korean office format — government ministries, research agencies, and large enterprises publish contracts, reports, and tender documents almost exclusively in it. But HWP is a proprietary binary format, opaque to most tools outside Hancom Office. LLMs and automation pipelines can't read the contents; search engines can't index them; grant applicants end up screenshotting paragraphs into chat windows.
Hangul.io parses HWP directly from the official Hancom spec — including 배포용 (distribution-format) encryption used for locked-down government templates — and hands back clean HTML, Markdown, or Word-openable content anyone can work with. Free, no sign-up, no Hancom Office needed.
Who it's for
Gov & enterprise readers
Employees, grant applicants, and citizens who receive HWP files from ministries, agencies, or large Korean firms and need to read, quote, or translate them on macOS, Linux, or mobile.
Researchers & journalists
People who need to search through, cite, or translate Korean reports, tender documents, and contracts — without Hancom Office as a gatekeeper.
AI & automation pipelines
Teams feeding Korean documents into LLMs, search indexes, or ETL jobs. The REST API returns clean Markdown or HTML — a format LLMs can actually work with.
Anyone, anywhere
The editor runs entirely in the browser. No account, no download, no paywall. Korean content, universally accessible.
Features
Full document extraction
Structural parsing of HWP 5.x (binary, OLE) and HWPX (OWPML / KS X 6101). Tables, cell spans, paragraphs, page breaks, and styles come straight from the records — no OCR, no heuristics.
배포용 decryption
AES-128 ECB + LCG PRNG, per Hancom's distribution-format spec. Government templates that can't even be edited in Hancom Office's free viewer open here.
Styled text preserved
Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, colour, pt size, font family, paragraph alignment, line spacing, cell fills, and borders — all preserved from the original document.
Embedded images
PNG / JPEG / BMP extracted from the HWP container and inlined into the output. Editable and exportable without a separate asset step.
In-browser editor
Google-Docs-style menus, Hancom-style rulers, multi-document workspace with local autosave, dark mode, bilingual UI (KR / EN). Export to Markdown, HTML, or Word .doc.
REST API
Upload files or pass URLs, receive JSON or downloadable files. Free, no authentication. See the API page for endpoints and examples.
Roadmap
The format is deep and we're honest about what isn't perfect yet. These are the gaps we're actively working on, in rough priority order:
- Outline numbering — the native Korean 1 / 가 / ① outline style rendered as proper
<ol>/<ul>lists. - Footnotes and dynamic fields — auto-numbered footnotes and
%fmu-style dynamic fields that today silently drop. - Vector & EMF images — rasterize embedded diagrams so they render alongside the PNG / JPEG images we already handle.
- Ruler-driven cell resize — drag column widths and row heights from the rulers, Hancom-Office style.
- Cleaner collaborative save — shared links for a document instead of local-only autosave.
Deliberately out of scope: write-back to HWP (it's a proprietary
write format — export to .doc / .html and save-as
HWP from Hancom Office for a round-trip), password-protected files
(no public spec), and HWP 3.x (rare legacy binary format).
License & legal
MIT. Source is available for inspection, modification, and self-hosting.
Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with Hancom Inc. HWP and Hangul are trademarks of Hancom Inc.
Contact
Bug reports, conversion failures, unusual documents you'd like us to test against — email hello@hangul.io.