korean uses two different writing systems. one is hangul, the main alphabet. in north korea, only hangeul (known as choseongeul in north korea) is used by law. in south korea, only hangeul should be used in most public areas like education, but the other system, hanja, is still used in some newspapers and professional areas. hanja is the system of chinese characters that are used in korean. it was the only way to write korean before the creation of hangeul in the 15th century, and it was common in novels before the 19th century.