The history of calligraphy in Korea is very long, prior to the post-war republican period, very little calligraphy of merit was done in hangul or the Korean national script. Scribes, both judicial and civil, and the educated classes traditionally used Chinese script, most often official Ming-style scripts in writing.

Rubbings of stele in Korea have given historically an archive of Korean calligraphy styles going back as far as the sixth century Silla era.

Artists in Korea used broader, less shaped brushes with thicker ink and chose thicker brush-strokes for writing, which makes identifying even Chinese ideograms by Korean hands from the Joseon Dynasty relatively simple.

Official historians included Chinese characters within their writings in regions where hangul lacked technical terms or accuracy. This has left the development of artistic Korean calligraphy outside of only the highest classes, as a recent innovation.

Webography

• Newspaper article with visuals on Korean calligraphy

• Useful General introduction despite dark background colour