Configure Emacs to use Truetype Korean fonts and Hangul input

For some reason, Emacs defaults to using a heinous-looking X-windows font for Korean (Daewoo mincho from 1987 which was licensed from some Japanese company). It defaults to this font even when better-looking Truetype fonts have been installed on the system.

Searching the Korean web, I found that the following must be added to your ~/.emacs file:

	(defun xftp (&optional frame)
	"Return t if FRAME support XFT font backend."
	(let ((xft-supported))
	(mapc (lambda (x) (if (eq x 'xft) (setq xft-supported t)))
	(frame-parameter frame 'font-backend))
	xft-supported))
	(when (xftp)
	(let ((fontset "fontset-default"))
	(set-fontset-font fontset 'latin
	'("DejaVu Sans Mono" . "unicode-bmp"))
	(set-fontset-font fontset 'hangul
	'("NanumGothic" . "unicode-bmp"))
	(set-face-attribute 'default nil
	:font fontset
	:height 110)))

view raw enable Korean TT hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The Elisp code above defines a default hangul fontset that uses NanumGothic true type font (just make sure that you have nanum ttf fonts as well as Deja Vu Sans Mono installed on your system). You could, of course, specify a different default font for latin (I use monofur) and hangul.

The next thing I needed to do was enable Korean (Hangul) input in Emacs. Since I use ibus-hangul on my Linux machines, I thought I had to figure out how to get ibus to work with Emacs. But it turns out that Emacs has its own built-in IME!

You can invoke hangul input manually with

M-x set-input-method

(Meta/Alt x) followed by

korean-hangul

To toggle between English and Korean input, press C-\ (Ctrl-backslash)

To make korean-hangul the default input method, you can directly edit your ~/.emacs file under custom-set-variables and add the following:

'(default-input-method "korean-hangul")

Or you can do the same thing through the F10 -> Customize Emacs menu.

Note that you will not be able to switch between Korean and English in Emacs by pressing the Hangul key on Korean keyboards. You also will not be able to type traditional Chinese (hanja) characters with the Korean keyboard hanja key. To enter hanja characters, type the Korean characters you wish to convert to Chinese and then press F9 for a list of possible characters.