Hanja
Although a phonetic Korean alphabet, now known as Chosŏn'gŭl or Hangul, had been created by Sejong the Great, it did not come into widespread official use until the late 19th and early 20th century. Thus, until that time it was necessary to be fluent in reading and writing Hanja in order to be literate in Korean, as the vast majority of Korean literature and most other Korean documents were written in Literary Chinese, using Hanja as its primary script. Today, a good working knowledge of Chinese characters is still important for anyone who wishes to study older texts (up to about the 1990s), or anyone who wishes to read scholarly texts in the humanities. Learning a certain number of Hanja is very helpful for understanding the etymology of Sino-Korean words, and for enlarging one's Korean vocabulary. Today, Hanja are not used to write native Korean words, which are always rendered in Hangul, and even words of Chinese origin—"Hanja-eo" ()—are written with the Hangul alphabet most of the time, with the corresponding Chinese character often written next to it in order to prevent confusion with other characters or words with the same phonetics.
Korean honorifics
Pronouns in Korean have their own set of polite equivalents (e.g., 저 ("jeo") is the humble form of 나 ("na", "I") and 저희 ("jeohui") is the humble form of 우리 ("uri", "we")). However, Korean language allows for coherent syntax without pronouns, effectively making Korean a so-called pro-drop language, thus Koreans usually avoid using the second-person singular pronoun, especially when using honorific forms. Third-Person Pronouns are occasionally avoided as well, mainly to maintain sense of politeness. Although honorific form of 너 ("neo", singular "you") is 당신 ("dangsin", literally, "friend" or "dear"), that term is used only as a form of address in a few specific social contexts, such as between two married couples or in an ironic sense between strangers. Other words are usually substituted where possible (e.g., the person's name, a kinship term, a professional title, the plural 여러분 "yeoreobun", or no word at all, relying on context to supply meaning instead).