"Hanja" 한자 / 漢字 , Chinese characters, have been used in the Korean regions since the 2nd century BCE for official documents. The establishment of the Han empire's "commanderies" in the northwestern portion of the Korean peninsula brought about a dissemination of the Chinese writing system into the region. During the Samguk Period, even after the Chinese were driven out of the region, Chinese characters continued to serve as the official writing system.
The usage of Hanja did not closely follow that of the Chinese usage, as the Korean languages were and still are radically different from Chinese. Instead, similar to the Japanese, the Koreans utilized Hanja for phonetic purposes, where each character represented a particular Korean sound whereas Chinese characters in their original usage served as ideograms. This was called "Hyangchal" 향찰. At the same time, the court language and the language of high culture was classical Chinese. Thus Hanja was used for dual purposes. The use of Chinese characters to represent Korean sounds persisted even until the Joseon Period (1392-1911 CE) when Hangeul 한글 was invented.
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