

You might be thinking, if people are familiar with HWP and they like it, what’s the problem? The government is using ODT for cloud-based document viewing, but is still allowing HWP files as attachments. If there was ever an argument for free market, this is it. I blame the bad software on a lack of competition in the very protected market. Hangul Word Processor supports Windows okay, OSx a little bit, and Linux not at all. I suspect one factor in the Korea switching to. odt, and is part of the reason for Korea. This rationale was a driver for the UK government to switch to. Open document standards allow taxpayers to choose which software they use. Should taxpayers be forced to pay a private company to access public information? Many governments are saying no. Korea, however, is stuck in that familiar interface and file icon. Now the world has moved on and good word processors do well with other languages. HWP supported Korean text very well when no others did. Korean character sets were not well supported until recently on most word processors. Stuck in the pastĪt one time, the need for HWP was understandable. Government organizations were forced to use HWP, and businesses where “encouraged” strongly. The format is proprietary, and no other word processor can read it. They must have a valid license(s) (because no other word processor is acceptable). Even schoolchildren were reminded that it’s their duty to buy HWP. It is/was a government sponsored monopoly. To understand why this is such a big deal, you first need to understand that HWP is part of the national identity. ZDNet Korea reports that the South Korean government is making a first-step to shift from the proprietary Hangul Word Processor (HWP) file format (.hwp) to the Open Document Format (ODF). Koreas first step to globalization through ODT
