Dive in Korean

Topic guide

Korean Hanja Roots: One Character, Ten Words

Korean absorbed thousands of Chinese-origin roots the way English absorbed Latin and Greek โ€” learn the root once, and a whole family of words stops being random syllables.

Each page here takes one hanja root and shows the everyday Korean words built from it.

  1. 01

    ํ•™(ๅญธ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words

    The Chinese character ๅญธ (hak, 'to study/learn') hides inside dozens of everyday Korean words โ€” ํ•™๊ต, ํ•™์ƒ, ํ•™์›, ์œ ํ•™, ์ž…ํ•™. Learn the root once, unlock them all.

  2. 02

    ์‹ค(ๅฎค): One Hanja Root, Every Kind of Room

    The Chinese character ๅฎค (sil, 'room') builds dozens of everyday Korean words for rooms and spaces โ€” ๊ต์‹ค, ํ™”์žฅ์‹ค, ์‚ฌ๋ฌด์‹ค, ์นจ์‹ค. Learn the root once.

  3. 03

    ๊ตญ(ๅœ‹): One Hanja Root, Every Country Word

    The Chinese character ๅœ‹ (guk, 'country/nation') builds Korea's core geography vocabulary โ€” ํ•œ๊ตญ, ์™ธ๊ตญ, ์ „๊ตญ, ์• ๊ตญ. Learn the root once, unlock them all.