Korean Web Design: What's Different (2026)
Korean web design for foreign brands: fonts and KRDS type sizes, line breaking, trust signals, KakaoTalk sharing and what to keep from your global site.
Korean web design differs from Western design less in taste than in mechanics. Korean text needs its own fonts, line-breaking rules and sizes, Korean visitors expect local trust signals such as a business information footer and a KakaoTalk contact button, and sharing happens inside KakaoTalk. Get those right and your global brand can carry over largely intact; get them wrong and even a beautiful site looks imported.
This guide covers what to change, what to keep, and the references Korean designers themselves use, including the Korean government's own design system, KRDS.
Why do Korean websites look so dense?
Foreign teams often notice it first: Korean commerce and service sites can look busier than their Western equivalents. Some of that is style and fashion, which changes. Some of it has concrete causes you will run into on your own Korean pages.
- Required business information. Korea's E-Commerce Consumer Protection Act (Article 10) requires an online mall operator to display its trade name and representative, address, phone and email, business registration number and terms of use. That block usually sits in the footer, and it is not optional decoration.
- More contact routes. A Korean page often offers a phone number, a KakaoTalk Channel button and an inquiry form side by side, because visitors choose different channels.
- Compact text. Korean usually takes less horizontal space than the same message in English, so a layout drawn for English copy can leave room that Korean designers fill with more information.
Density is not a goal in itself. The Korean government's design system pushes the other way, toward readable type sizes, generous line height and clear hierarchy, and plenty of well-designed Korean sites are calm. Design for clarity first, then add what Korean visitors need to trust you.
Which font do Korean websites use?
There is no single standard. The fonts below are a safe starting point, and all of them are gothic (sans-serif), which is what KRDS asks for in body text.
| Font | What the official source says |
|---|---|
| Pretendard | Open source under the SIL Open Font License; built from Inter, Source Han Sans and M PLUS 1p; nine weights plus a variable version; a dynamic subset that loads only the characters on the page |
| Pretendard GOV | The KRDS default for its standard style; based on Pretendard and designed for accessibility and readability in public services |
| Noto Sans | Named by KRDS as a recommended gothic font |
| Nanum Gothic | Named by KRDS as a recommended gothic font |
| Spoqa Han Sans | Named by KRDS as a recommended gothic font |
KRDS gives a clear rule for body text: use a readable gothic (sans-serif) font. Brand display fonts are fine for banners and large headings, but keep them out of body copy if they are not gothic or are hard to read.
Pairing with your Latin font. Most Korean fonts include Latin glyphs, and they rarely match your brand's Latin typeface. Decide whether English words inside Korean text use your brand font or the Korean font's Latin. Pretendard's Latin is based on Inter, so it sits comfortably next to many modern sans-serif brand fonts.
File size. The Unicode Hangul Syllables block alone has 11,172 precomposed syllables, so a full Korean font is much heavier than a Latin one. Load Korean fonts only on Korean pages, and use subsetting: Pretendard publishes a dynamic subset that downloads only the characters on the page. Check that the bold weight you design with actually exists in the font, or the browser will fake it.
What size and line height should Korean text use?
KRDS publishes numbers you can use directly, even on a commercial site:
- Body size at least 16px. KRDS uses 17px as the default body size for Pretendard GOV, because that font looks relatively small at the same pixel size.
- Line height at least 150% for readability and accessibility, citing WCAG 1.4.12 Text Spacing.
- Relative units. Use rem or em rather than fixed px so users can scale text.
- Two or three weights. The standard style uses regular (400) and bold (700); KRDS suggests limiting text to about four weights at most, with 400, 500 and 700 as the ideal set.
- Heading scale. A size step of about 1.25 to 1.5 times between body and heading levels.
The same pixel size looks different in different Korean fonts, so set sizes after choosing the font, not before.
How should Korean text break across lines?
Korean puts spaces between words, but browsers will still break a line in the middle of a Korean word by default, which reads like a typo. The CSS rule word-break: keep-all stops that for Chinese, Japanese and Korean text while leaving other text alone. Apply it to Korean headings and body text, then check narrow phone screens for long strings such as URLs or product codes, which may need overflow-wrap: anywhere.
Headings need extra attention. A Korean headline that wraps one syllable onto a second line looks broken, and the fix is usually editorial (a shorter heading) rather than technical. Review every heading at phone width with the final Korean copy, not with placeholder text or machine translation.
Navigation and trust signals Korean visitors look for
These are the elements a Korean visitor expects to find without searching for them:
| Element | Where it usually goes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Business information block | Footer | Legal display duty for online malls; also a basic trust check |
| KakaoTalk Channel button | Header, footer or a floating button | Many visitors prefer chat to email |
| Phone number and hours | Header or footer | Still expected, especially for services |
| Korean privacy policy link | Footer, usually set apart from other links | The Personal Information Protection Act (Article 30) requires a public privacy policy |
| Local payment logos | Product and checkout pages | Shows that local cards and wallets work |
| Naver and Kakao login buttons | Login and sign-up | If you have accounts; see Kakao and Naver login |
The KakaoTalk side is covered in KakaoTalk Channel and AlimTalk.
Design for KakaoTalk sharing and mobile
Korean users share links in KakaoTalk chats, and KakaoTalk builds the preview card from your Open Graph tags: title, description and image. Design that card as deliberately as a social ad. Write the Korean og:title and og:description for each page, make an og:image that reads at small size, and after you change them, use the tool on Kakao's developer site to check the tags and clear Kakao's cached preview.
Design mobile layouts as the primary layout for consumer pages. Practically, that means:
- Contact and purchase buttons reachable with a thumb, not hidden in a footer menu.
- Forms that use Korean address search and accept phone numbers with or without hyphens. See Korean address search API.
- Long product descriptions broken into sections with headings, so they are scannable on a small screen.
Should the Korean site look different from your global site?
Usually less different than people expect. Keep:
- Your visual identity: logo, colours, photography style, spacing system and components.
- Your page structure, where it serves Korean visitors as well as it serves others.
- Your design tokens, so both languages stay in sync as the brand evolves.
Change:
- Typography, with a Korean font, sizes and line height chosen for Korean.
- Layouts that depend on English text length, such as tight buttons or headings designed around a particular word count.
- Trust and contact elements, as in the table above.
- Imagery with English text in it, which needs a Korean version or should be replaced.
If you are deciding whether you need Korean pages at all, start with Do you need a Korean website?. The technical checklist for URLs and hreflang is in our Korean website localization checklist.
Examples from our own work
The examples we can show are our own projects. The EMECS website is a Korean-English technical site with hreflang between the language versions. The UNESCO i-WSSM platform was rebuilt with Korean and English routing and is now in operation. On the design side, we have also designed a long-form detail page for a law firm (client name withheld). And this site is designed in both languages from one set of design tokens, with the Korean pages set in a Korean-capable font rather than a fallback.
Frequently asked questions
Why are Korean websites so cluttered?
Partly fashion, partly function. Korean online stores must display business details such as the registration number, many pages offer several contact channels at once, and compact Korean text leaves room that designers fill. Clean Korean sites exist too; the government's KRDS guidelines favour readable sizes and clear hierarchy.
Which font do Korean websites use?
There is no single standard. The government design system KRDS uses Pretendard GOV for its standard style and names Noto Sans, Nanum Gothic and Spoqa Han Sans as recommended gothic (sans-serif) fonts. Pretendard, the open-source font Pretendard GOV is based on, is another safe choice.
Should the Korean site look different from our global site?
Keep your identity, colours and components. Change typography, layouts that depend on English text length, and trust elements such as the business information footer and a KakaoTalk contact button.
What font size should Korean body text be?
KRDS sets the minimum at 16px and uses 17px for Pretendard GOV, with line height of at least 150%. Use relative units so visitors can enlarge text.
Is there a Korean design system I can follow?
Yes. KRDS (Korea Design System), published by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, covers colour, typography, layout, components and service patterns. It is written for government services, but its typography and accessibility guidance is useful for any Korean site.
Sources
All checked October 2026.
- KRDS (Korea Design System), Typography style guide (Korean) and KRDS home
- Pretendard, GitHub repository and licence
- MDN Web Docs, word-break
- Unicode Consortium, Hangul Syllables code chart (U+AC00 to U+D7A3)
- Korea Ministry of Government Legislation, Act on Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce (Article 10)
- Korea Ministry of Government Legislation, Personal Information Protection Act (Article 30)
- Kakao Developers, Tools: KakaoTalk URL meta information and cache reset
- W3C, Understanding WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.12 Text Spacing
Bringing your design to Korea
If you have a global design system and want to know what it needs for Korean, send us your brand guidelines or a link to your site and we will point out what to adapt. See how we approach visual work on our design service, or step back to the whole launch in Korea market entry.