As far as I know, there is no free Hancom HWP reader for Linux, the OS I use, or for the Mac OSes, or any of the other various OSes that people all over the world choose to work this. And even if a HWP-reader exists, it only exists for Windows OS. You might pause and say, “But there is a free Hancom reader! They can download it here!” Sure, that’s true… but links die. (In fact, I know a number of Koreans who dislike the program and refuse to work with it, since it lacks many important functions available in most modern word processors.) But more importantly, if someone does not have Hancom’s software installed, then your HWP file is impossible to open… and thus useless. This may shock you, but remember, Hangeul–the computer program by Hancom, I mean–is a specifically Korean program, and not really used anywhere else except by Koreans abroad. HWP files may be completely useless to them, for two reasons. If you are emailing files to a non-Korean, you should be aware that. Meanwhile, Proprietary file formats-the kind you can open only with one program, such as HWP-format files-are less popular, especially for common jobs like word processing. Likewise, files formats that are popular are used, to ensure that anyone can open a file if they need to do so. In most of those OSes, because internet standards are established and followed, users can do all the same things in any browser. This diversity is important, because out there in the rest of the world, there is also a huge variety in the kinds of OSes people can and do use: not just Windows, but also Linux, Mac, and other OSes like OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, and more. You need to be aware of the fact that these differences exist. Korean internet users are also accustomed to providing a lot of personal information to sign up for (and use) major websites in Korea, in a way that would shock most of the rest of the world.

(Mac is starting to become popular in Korea, Linux is a little bit too, but not as much as worldwide). Korean computer users tend-for complex reasons I won’t get into-to have a lot more homogeneity in terms of their software and OSes than computer users internationally. If you are a Korean student, it is understandable that your assumptions of file formats and how the internet works are somewhat different from the general assumptions in most of the rest of the world.

Hwp file viewer software