Free Korean OCR — 한국어 PDF to Text
Free Korean OCR for PDF, images, and scanned documents. Recognizes Hangul 한글 script with high accuracy. Browser-based, no upload, privacy-first.
About Korean OCR
한국어 OCR — Korean OCR extracts Hangul (한글) text from scanned PDFs and images, preserving the syllable-block structure that makes Korean unique. Our engine handles all 11,172 modern Hangul syllables plus Hanja (漢字) commonly seen in academic, legal, and historical Korean documents.
우리는 Tesseract 5 한국어 LSTM 모델을 사용합니다 — 한국 정부 문서, 신문 (조선일보, 동아일보, 한겨레), 대학 교재에서 훈련되었습니다. 모든 처리는 브라우저에서 이루어지며 — 주민등록증, 계약서, 통장 사본이 서버에 업로드되지 않습니다. 완전 무료, 가입 불필요, 워터마크 없음.
How We Compare
Compared to desktop alternatives like Adobe Acrobat Pro (starting at $19.99/month), Smallpdf ($12/month for unlimited), or iLovePDF ($9/month Premium), PDF AI Tools delivers comparable quality at $0 for the core feature set. We skip the subscription friction by processing most operations directly in your browser with WebAssembly — no server infrastructure costs to pass on to users. Our AI features (summarization, chat, OCR) use a pay-as-you-go backend that keeps your total cost well under $5/month even for power users.
How to Use Free Korean OCR — 한국어 PDF to Text
- Step 1: 한국어 PDF 또는 이미지를 드롭하세요 (JPG/PNG/TIFF 지원)
- Step 2: Korean (한국어) is pre-selected as the OCR language
- Step 3: Add English as secondary for mixed bilingual documents
- Step 4: "추출" 클릭 — Hangul syllables recognised page-by-page
- Step 5: 텍스트를 복사하거나 .docx / searchable PDF로 다운로드
Why Choose PDF AI Tools
We've built PDF AI Tools to replace expensive desktop software like Adobe Acrobat for 95% of common document workflows — at zero cost to you. Unlike competitors who gate features behind paywalls, add watermarks, or limit file sizes, our tools are genuinely free and genuinely unlimited. Your privacy matters: files processed client-side in your browser never touch our servers, and even AI-powered features use encrypted, auto-deleting processing pipelines.
Key Features
- Full Hangul coverage — all 11,172 syllable blocks + Jamo (자모) decomposition when needed
- Hanja (漢字) recognition — traditional Chinese characters used in Korean legal and academic texts
- Mixed Korean-English — common in K-academic papers, tech manuals, business reports
- Korean punctuation — 「」『』《》「〜」full-width variants preserved
- Vertical text support — traditional Korean documents and old newspapers
- In-browser only — 주민등록증 (national IDs), 등기부등본 (property deeds), 계약서 (contracts) never upload
- Export as UTF-8 .txt, .docx, or searchable PDF with Korean text layer
Frequently Asked Questions
손글씨 한글을 인식할 수 있나요?
No. The Korean Tesseract model supports printed Hangul only. Handwritten Korean (손글씨) is not reliably recognised. Specialised handwriting models are needed — on our roadmap for a future release.
한자가 섞인 문서도 처리되나요?
Yes. Mixed 한글-漢字 documents common in legal filings (법원 판결문), academic papers, and pre-1990 newspapers work. The engine recognises both scripts simultaneously. Pure Hanja without Hangul context may drop accuracy by 10-15%.
How accurate is it on Korean newspapers?
On clean printed Korean newspapers (조선일보, 동아일보, 한겨레, 중앙일보), typical accuracy is 93-96%. Very small fonts or poor-quality fax scans drop to 85-90%.
주민등록증 스캔본이 안전하게 처리되나요?
네, 100% 안전합니다. 모든 OCR은 브라우저에서 실행되며 — 주민등록증, 운전면허증, 여권 같은 민감한 문서가 서버에 업로드되지 않습니다. For PII redaction before sharing, use our Redact PDF tool afterwards.
북한 문서도 처리되나요?
Yes — North Korean Hangul uses slightly different orthography (no Hanja, different spelling rules) but the same Unicode blocks. The Tesseract model handles both, though accuracy on DPRK-specific fonts (e.g., 천리마체) may be 5-10% lower.