"Question 1: within 1,000 characters." "Motivation: within 1,500 bytes." With the same text, the amount you can write differs by two or three times depending on the rule. To avoid the "character limit exceeded" warning right before submitting, you need to know exactly how Korean application systems count.
1. Characters: with or without spaces
With spaces
Spaces and line breaks each count as one character. Most private-sector job sites in Korea use this rule. If a notice simply says "1,000 characters", it usually means with spaces.
Without spaces
The number of characters after removing spaces, tabs and line breaks. For the same text, the number is usually about 75 to 80 percent of the with-spaces count. Some contests and abstracts use this rule.
2. Bytes: how many bytes is a Korean character?
Byte limits measure how much storage the characters take. The confusion comes from the fact that a Korean syllable has a different size depending on the encoding.
| Encoding | One Korean syllable | One Latin letter, digit or space |
|---|---|---|
| EUC-KR | 2 bytes | 1 byte |
| UTF-8 | 3 bytes | 1 byte |
Korean public institutions and public enterprises have traditionally used the 2-byte rule, but newer systems sometimes use UTF-8 (3 bytes). If the notice does not say which rule applies, paste your text into the application form and check the number it shows.
Example
Take the sentence "저는 성실합니다." ("I am diligent."):
- 7 Korean syllables, 1 space, 1 period
- Characters with spaces: 9
- 2-byte rule: 7 × 2 + 1 + 1 = 16 bytes
- UTF-8: 7 × 3 + 1 + 1 = 23 bytes
3. How many characters is a line break?
Many applicants miss this. On Windows, one press of Enter is stored as two characters (CR + LF). Some systems count a line break as one character, others as two (or two bytes). If your text has many paragraphs, this can change the count by dozens of characters, so leave some margin instead of hitting the limit exactly.
4. Watch out for special characters
- Curly quotes inserted automatically by word processors take more bytes than straight quotes.
- An ellipsis character (…) is one character, while three periods (...) are three.
- Emoji take 4 bytes or more in UTF-8 and cause storage errors in some systems. Do not use them in applications.
5. A practical order of work
- Check the unit (characters or bytes) and whether spaces count in the notice.
- Write your draft in Hangul or Word.
- Paste it into the character counter, or drop the file, to see all six counts at once.
- Aim for about 95 percent of the limit.
- Paste the text into the application form and check the number the system shows.
- Keep a backup in Notepad before submitting. Sessions expire and drafts get lost more often than you think.
Knowing the counting rule saves you from cutting sentences unnecessarily or panicking when the limit is exceeded. Techniques for adjusting length continue in the cover letter length guide.