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| EUC-KR | |
|---|---|
| Name | EUC-KR |
| Alias | Extended Unix Code for Korean |
| Status | Legacy |
| Regions | South Korea |
| Developer | KS X 1001 committee |
| Type | Variable-width encoding |
| Encodes | hangul syllables, hanja |
| Classification | ISO 2022 family |
EUC-KR is a legacy character encoding designed for representing Korean text on computers and telecommunications systems. It was standardized to support the Hangul syllabary and Korean Hanja ideographs for use in South Korean information technology, facilitating interchange among systems such as Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows NT, and early Internet mail and news systems. EUC-KR played a central role in the transition from national standards to international interoperability in East Asian computing environments.
EUC-KR maps 7-bit ASCII and multi-byte sequences to represent Korean script and selected CJK Unified Ideographs. The encoding is closely associated with the national standard KS X 1001 (previously KS C 5646), and interoperates with systems following ISO/IEC 2022, ISO-2022-KR conventions. Implementations of EUC-KR were widespread in platforms such as Sun Microsystems workstations, DEC systems, and software from IBM, Oracle Corporation, and Adobe Systems. It coexisted with other encodings including UTF-8, ISO-2022-JP, Shift_JIS, and Big5 during the 1990s and early 2000s transition to Unicode-led infrastructures.
The origin of EUC-KR is tied to South Korean standardization efforts in the late 20th century, particularly the creation and revisions of KS X 1001 by committees involving organizations like KISA and the Korean Standards Association working with vendors such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics. Early adoption occurred in systems from Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Microsoft as South Korea expanded its telecommunications and broadcasting industries, including projects by KT Corporation and public agencies like the Ministry of Information and Communication (South Korea). EUC-KR’s evolution intersected with global moves toward Unicode, initiatives led by the Unicode Consortium, and events such as the adoption of ISO/IEC 10646. International interoperability challenges arose during projects like the deployment of World Wide Web services by institutions such as NASA, Harvard University, and Cambridge University Press when handling Korean text.
EUC-KR is a variable-width encoding: 7-bit ASCII (US-ASCII) bytes represent basic Latin characters, while double-byte sequences represent Korean syllables and hanja drawn from KS X 1001. The mapping covers modern syllables used in publications by organizations like The Korea Times and Yonhap News Agency and classical ideographs found in corpora at Seoul National University and the National Library of Korea. Mechanisms for byte ranges and lead/trail byte validation are similar to those in EUC-JP and EUC-CN, and implementations needed to account for newline handling used in software from GNU Project, Perl, Python Software Foundation, and Mozilla Foundation. Detailed conversion tables were distributed by vendors including Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corporation and used by localization teams at Electronic Arts, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Naver Corporation.
Several vendors and projects produced extensions of the KS X 1001 repertoire to cover missing characters required by publishers and academia, affecting systems from Oracle, SAP SE, and SAP-affiliated deployments. Notable related encodings include vendor-specific mappings used in IBM DB2, Oracle Database, and MySQL connectors; adaptations for legacy telecom systems at SK Telecom; and conversion utilities in libiconv and ICU maintained by developers associated with Google, Apple, and the Free Software Foundation. Extensions attempted to accommodate specialized symbols used by institutions like Yonsei University and cultural repositories such as the National Museum of Korea.
EUC-KR was predominant in South Korean web pages, email, and BBS services run by providers like Daum Communications, Nate, and academic networks at Korea University before the ascendancy of Unicode encodings such as UTF-8 in services by Google Korea and Facebook. Operating systems including Windows 95, Windows 2000, Windows XP, various BSD derivatives, and distributions of Linux supported EUC-KR via locale definitions maintained by projects like GNU libc and gettext. Migration to Unicode involved standards bodies such as ISO, the Unicode Consortium, and national agencies coordinating transitions comparable to those in Japan and China.
Misinterpretation between EUC-KR and encodings like UTF-8 or Shift_JIS has led to mojibake observed on services run by global organizations such as Microsoft Exchange, Google Mail, and Yahoo! Mail. Ambiguities in mapping to Unicode produced normalization concerns addressed by libraries in ICU, libiconv, and runtime environments like Java (programming language) and .NET Framework. Security issues arose when improperly validated byte sequences allowed injection vectors in web applications developed using frameworks such as Apache HTTP Server, Nginx, Django (web framework), and Ruby on Rails, prompting mitigation guidance from agencies like CERT and South Korea's KISA.
Support for EUC-KR exists in conversion utilities and libraries provided by GNU Project tools, ICU Project, glibc, language runtimes from the OpenJDK community, and commercial products from Microsoft and Apple. Input method editors developed by companies such as Naver Corporation, Microsoft, and open-source projects like SCIM enabled composition of Hangul compatible with EUC-KR legacy data. Major archives and digital libraries at institutions like the National Library of Korea, Korean Film Archive, Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, and university repositories maintain legacy documents encoded in EUC-KR and provide migration pathways to Unicode-based formats.
Category:Character encodings