Notice
This article was written based on Hancom’s official website and publicly available materials as of July 14, 2026, and the company’s business strategy and products may change.
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What This Article Covers
How Has Hancom Survived Until Today?
South Korea’s software market has undergone major changes over the past 30 years. Global office software entered the Korean market in earnest, while web-based office software and cloud-based collaboration services also spread rapidly. As not only the way documents are created but also the work environment itself changed, competition in the office software market became increasingly intense.
Even in this rapidly changing market, Hancom has maintained its position as a leading office software company representing South Korea.
So how has Hancom been able to maintain its competitiveness for more than 30 years?
Many people think it is “because public institutions use it” or “because HWP files are widely used.” Of course, these factors have also played an important role in maintaining its competitiveness. However, they are not enough to fully explain Hancom as it exists today.
If a single file format had been its only competitive strength, that strength would have weakened as soon as a new document format emerged or the work environment changed. Yet Hancom has continued its business as document creation environments shifted from paper to PCs, and then to cloud- and AI-centered environments.
In other words, Hancom has survived until today not because of a single product or specific feature, but because it has continuously developed its competitiveness in response to changing work environments.
In this article, we will examine why Hancom continues to be used by public institutions and how it has maintained its competitiveness even after making HWPX publicly available, in order to understand what Hancom’s real competitive strength is.
Why Hancom Continues to Be Used by Public Institutions
One of the first characteristics that comes to mind when discussing Hancom is that it has been used by public institutions for a long time. Some people simply ask, “Isn’t it still used because the government uses it?”
However, the actual reason is difficult to explain simply by the fact that certain institutions use it.
1. Because It Is Optimized for Korean-Language Document Creation Environments
Public institutions create a much wider variety of administrative documents than ordinary documents.
Tables, numbering systems, paragraph structures, typesetting methods, and various forms are often more complex than those used in ordinary documents, and individual institutions also have document creation practices that they have maintained for many years.
Hancom has developed its features over a long period to suit these Korean-language document environments and has continuously improved the various editing functions required in actual work.
2. A Document Ecosystem Built Over Many Years
Public institutions have accumulated vast numbers of documents created over several decades.
These documents are not simply files. They are administrative records and business assets. Existing documents often need to remain usable as they are, and they are also closely connected with various work systems.
If the document environment being used were suddenly changed, existing documents would need to be reviewed and converted, while work systems would also need to be modified and users retrained. This would require considerable time and cost.
The reason Hancom continues to be used by public institutions is therefore less about a preference for a particular program and more about the importance of maintaining the document environment built over many years and ensuring continuity of work.
3. Evolving from a Single Program into a Work Environment
Today, Hancom is no longer a company that simply provides a program for creating documents.
Created documents are sent to electronic approval systems, stored in document management systems, and connected with various work systems. In other words, organizations are not simply using a single document creation program. Multiple systems are connected as part of a single workflow.
By providing a foundation that connects document creation tools with various work environments, Hancom has maintained its competitiveness until today.
How Can Hancom Remain Competitive Even After Making HWPX Public?
Hancom made HWPX (Hangul Word Processor Markup Language) publicly available as an open document format. HWPX is an XML-based document format designed to pursue an open standard that anyone can implement through its publicly available specifications.
Some people who hear this news may wonder, “If the document format has been made public, doesn’t that mean other companies can now easily create products like Hancom’s?”
At first glance, that seems entirely possible.
But in reality, it is not.
What has actually been made public is the way documents are stored. The specifications defining how a document is structured and stored have been made public, but the technologies required to actually create, edit, display, and print those documents have not.
For example, when the same document is opened on different computers, keeping tables in exactly the same positions, displaying fonts and paragraph layouts accurately, and producing consistent results when printing or converting to PDF are difficult to implement simply by knowing the file structure.
This is the key point we will examine in the next section.
HWPX is an open document format that anyone can use, but HWPX alone is not enough to reproduce Hancom’s technology as it is.
Hancom’s Irreplaceable Competitive Strength Is Document Technology
As we have seen, HWPX is an open document format that anyone can use. This naturally raises another question.
“If the document format has been made public, doesn’t that reduce Hancom’s competitiveness?”
The answer is no.
The reason is that File Format and Document Technology are different concepts.
A file format is a specification that defines the structure in which a document is stored. Document technology, by contrast, is the core technology responsible for accurately displaying a document created by a user, editing it, printing it, and converting it into other formats.
For example, arranging a table so that it continues naturally across pages, preserving complex paragraph styles, correctly displaying equations and images, and reproducing different fonts and layouts consistently are not functions that can be implemented simply by understanding the file structure.
Likewise, ensuring that the same document produces the same result when opened on different operating systems such as Windows and macOS, and preventing the document from breaking when converted to PDF or printed, requires document processing technology accumulated over a long period.
These technologies cannot be created in a short period of time.
For more than 30 years, Hancom has continuously developed a wide range of document technologies, including document creation and editing, Rendering, Layout, table and equation processing, printing, PDF conversion, and document compatibility.
From a user’s perspective, it may simply look like a program for creating documents, but within it lies a substantial amount of software technology and know-how accumulated to handle countless exceptional cases.
Document technology accumulated over such a long period is not used only in Hancom Office.
More recently, Hancom has been providing this technology to businesses and public institutions in the form of SDKs (Software Development Kits). By using these SDKs, companies can implement functions within their own work systems for creating and viewing documents, converting them to PDF, or printing them without having to develop those functions themselves.
In other words, Hancom is expanding its business beyond selling document creation software into a platform company that provides document technology itself.
Hancom’s competitiveness therefore lies not in the HWP or HWPX file format, but in the document technology it has accumulated over decades and the software capabilities that enable that technology to be used across various systems.
Why Hancom Is Attracting Attention Even in the AI Era
With the emergence of generative AI, many companies are adopting AI technologies. However, when we look at actual corporate work, the thing AI handles most is ultimately documents.
Most information created by businesses and public institutions—including reports, contracts, meeting minutes, proposals, manuals, and official documents—is managed in document form.
For AI to automate work, it must be able to understand and analyze these documents, extract necessary information, or generate new documents. In other words, having an advanced AI model alone does not create work innovation. What is becoming increasingly important is how effectively existing documents and work systems can be connected.
This is precisely where the document technology Hancom has accumulated over many years gains new competitive value.
Technology that can process documents reliably and convert them into various formats can serve as a foundation for AI to work with documents.
Building on these strengths, Hancom is expanding AI-based services such as AI Orchestrator and AI OCR, while also focusing on work automation using document data and the development of enterprise AI environments.
What is important here is that Hancom is not a company that directly develops massive AI models.
Instead, it has chosen a strategy of combining its existing document technology with AI to build platforms that can be used in actual work. This can be seen as a practical approach to creating new value in the AI era while preserving its existing strengths.
In the future, enterprise use of AI is highly likely to evolve beyond simply asking AI questions and receiving answers toward connecting AI with existing work systems and documents to automate repetitive tasks.
As this change progresses, technology that can accurately understand and process documents will play an increasingly important role, and Hancom is also building new competitiveness for the AI era based on its document technology.
DANA NOTES Commentary
Many people believe Hancom’s competitiveness lies in the HWP file format. However, its actual competitive strength lies not in the file format, but in document technology.
This is also why making HWPX publicly available as an open document format does not mean that anyone can create a product at the same level as Hancom Office. What has been made public is only the specification for storing documents. The document processing technology and know-how accumulated over decades have not been made public.
Today, Hancom is expanding its business from this foundation in document technology into SDKs, enterprise solutions, and AI platforms. In other words, while Hancom was once a software company focused on creating documents, it is now evolving into a software platform company that connects a wide range of work processes around documents.
DANA NOTES in One Line
Hancom’s competitiveness lies not in the HWP file format, but in the document technology it has accumulated over decades and the software capabilities that enable it to expand that technology into enterprise AI solutions.
