Native Korean words are always rendered solely in hangeul. Unlike Japanese, Korean does not give Chinese characters native readings: they are used only for words directly borrowed from Chinese. By contrast, many of the Chinese characters currently in use in Japan ( kanji) and Mainland China have been simplified, and contain fewer strokes than the corresponding hanja characters. Only a small number of hanja characters are modified or unique to Korean. Because hanja never underwent systematic reform, they are almost entirely identical to traditional Chinese and kyūjitai characters.
Hanja-mal (한자말) or hanja-eo (한자어, 漢 字 語) refers to words which can be written with hanja, and hanmun (한문, 漢 文) refers to Classical Chinese writing, although 'hanja' is sometimes used loosely to encompass these other concepts. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation. Hanja (한자, 漢字) is the Korean name for Chinese characters.
