Sino-Korean vocabulary in the context of "Samhan"

Hanja (Korean: 한자; Hanja: 漢字; IPA: [ha(ː)ntɕ͈a]), alternatively spelled Hancha, are Chinese characters used to write the Korean language. After characters were introduced to Korea to write Literary Chinese, they were adapted to write Korean as early as the Gojoseon period.

Hanjaeo (한자어; 漢字語) refers to Sino-Korean vocabulary, which can be written with Hanja, and hanmun (한문; 漢文) refers to Classical Chinese writing, although Hanja is also sometimes used to encompass both concepts. Because Hanja characters have never undergone any major reforms, they more closely resemble traditional Chinese and traditional Japanese characters, although the stroke orders for certain characters are slightly different. Such examples are the characters 教 and 敎, as well as 研 and 硏. Only a small number of Hanja characters were modified or are unique to Korean, with the rest being identical to the traditional Chinese characters. By contrast, many of the Chinese characters currently in use in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore have been simplified, and contain fewer strokes than the corresponding Hanja characters.

Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary (Vietnamese: từ Hán Việt (IPA: [tɯ̀ hǎn viə̂ˀt]), Chữ Hán: 詞漢越, 'Chinese-Vietnamese words') is a layer of about 3,000 monosyllabic morphemes of the Vietnamese language borrowed from Literary Chinese with consistent pronunciations based on Middle Chinese. Compounds using these morphemes are used extensively in cultural and technical vocabulary. Together with Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese vocabularies, Sino-Vietnamese has been used in the reconstruction of the sound categories of Middle Chinese. Samuel Martin grouped the three together as "Sino-Xenic". There is also an Old Sino-Vietnamese layer consisting of a few hundred words borrowed individually from Chinese in earlier periods, which are treated by speakers as native words. More recent loans from southern Chinese languages, usually names of foodstuffs such as lạp xưởng 'Chinese sausage' (from Cantonese 臘腸; 腊肠; laahpchéung), are not treated as Sino-Vietnamese but more direct borrowings.

Estimates of the proportion of words of Sinitic origin in the Vietnamese lexicon vary from one third to half and even to 70%. The proportion tends towards the lower end in speech and towards the higher end in technical writing. In the famous Từ điển tiếng Việt [vi] dictionary by Vietnamese linguist Hoàng Phê [vi], about 40% of the vocabulary is of Sinitic origin.

Sino-Xenic vocabularies are large-scale and systematic borrowings of the Chinese lexicon into the Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese languages, none of which are genetically related to Chinese. The resulting Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese vocabularies now make up a large part of the lexicons of these languages. The pronunciation systems for these vocabularies originated from conscious attempts to consistently approximate the original Chinese sounds while reading Classical Chinese. They are used alongside modern varieties of Chinese in historical Chinese phonology, particularly the reconstruction of the sounds of Middle Chinese. Some other languages, such as Hmong–Mien and Kra–Dai languages, also contain large numbers of Chinese loanwords but without the systematic correspondences that characterize Sino-Xenic vocabularies.

The term was coined in 1953 by the linguist Samuel E. Martin from the Greek ξένος (xénos, 'foreign'); Martin called these borrowings "Sino-Xenic dialects".

The South Korean standard language or Pyojuneo (Korean: 표준어; Hanja: 標準語; lit. 'Standard language') is the South Korean standard version of the Korean language. It is based on the Seoul dialect, although various words are borrowed from other regional dialects. It uses the Korean alphabet, created in December 1443 CE by the Joseon-era king Sejong the Great. Unlike the North Korean standard language (문화어, Munhwaŏ), the South Korean standard language includes many Sino-Korean words (i.e., loan-words from Chinese or Japanese), as well as some from English and other European languages.

North Korean standard language or Munhwaŏ (Korean: 문화어; Hancha: 文化語; lit. "cultural language") is the North Korean standard version of the Korean language. Munhwaŏ was adopted as the standard in 1966. The adopting proclamation stated that the Pyongan dialect spoken in the North Korean capital Pyongyang and its surroundings should be the basis for Munhwaŏ. Though this view is supported by some linguists, others posit that Munhwaŏ remains "firmly rooted" in the Seoul dialect, which had been the national standard for centuries. Thus, while the first group indicate that, besides the large divergence at the level of vocabulary, differences between the North and South Korean standards also include phonetic and phonological features, as well as stress and intonation, the others consider these differences attributable to replacement of Sino-Korean vocabulary and other loanwords with pure Korean words, or the Northern ideological preference for "the speech of the working class" which includes some words considered non-standard in the South.

Taegeuk (Korean: 태극; Hanja: 太極, Korean pronunciation: [tʰɛgɯk̚]) is a Sino-Korean term meaning "supreme ultimate", although it can also be translated as "great polarity / duality / extremes". The term and its overall concept is derived from the Chinese Taiji, popularised in the west as the Yin and Yang. The symbol was chosen for the design of the Korean national flag in the 1880s. It substitutes the black and white color scheme often seen in most taijitu illustrations with blue and red, respectively, along with a horizontal separator, as opposed to vertical.

South Koreans commonly refer to their national flag as taegeuk-gi (태극기), where gi (기) means "flag" or "banner". This particular color-themed taegeuk symbol is typically associated with Korean traditions and represents balance in the universe; the red half represents positive cosmic forces, and the blue half represents the complementary or opposing, negative cosmic forces. It is also used in Korean shamanism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.

Seon or Sŏn Buddhism (Korean: 선; Hanja: 禪; Korean pronunciation: [sʌn]) is the Korean name for Chan Buddhism, a branch of Mahāyāna Buddhism commonly known in English as Zen Buddhism. Seon is the Sino-Korean pronunciation of Chan, (Chinese: 禪; pinyin: chán) an abbreviation of 禪那 (chánnà), which is a Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit word of dhyāna ("meditation"). Seon Buddhism, represented chiefly by the Jogye and Taego orders, is the most common type of Buddhism found in Korea.

A main characteristic of Seon Buddhism is the use of the method of meditation, Ganhwa Seon. A Korean monk, Jinul accepted partially a meditative method of Chan Buddhism in 1205. In Chan Buddhism, hwadu (화두; 話頭) is a delivery of realising a natural state of the Awakening. Jinul addressed a doctrine of Sagyo Yiepseon (사교입선; 捨敎入禪) that monks should live an inborn life after learning and forgetting all creeds and theories. Within the doctrine of Jinul, hwadu is the witnessing of truthful meaning in everyday life.