PDF to HWPX
Drop a PDF and the text inside it is rebuilt as paragraphs and tables in an HWPX document. It opens in Hangul ready to edit, with no Hancom Office to install and no file to upload.
No upload
PDF to turn back
The PDF needs real text in it. A scanned PDF is a picture of a page, so there is nothing to pull out. Files open inside this browser and are never uploaded.
Reading order, paragraphs and tables come across. The exact placement on the page does not. A PDF never records what was a paragraph or a table, so both are reconstructed from where the characters sit.
Images, stamps and signatures printed on the page are pulled out and placed in the document too. They land in reading order rather than at their original coordinates.
A scanned PDF holds photographs rather than text, so there is nothing to convert. Drop one in and the tool will say so.
Whole pages are not pasted in as pictures. What you download opens as an editable document in Word, Excel or Hangul.
How to turn a PDF into HWPX
- 1
Drop a PDF
The file needs real text in it. If it is a scan, the tool says so right away.
- 2
Press convert
The first run downloads the Hangul document engine. It is 8MB and is not fetched again in the same tab.
- 3
Download the HWPX
It opens in any version of Hangul from 2007 onwards, ready to edit.
What this tool does
Without Hancom Office, and without uploading anything
Sometimes a document that arrived as a PDF has to be edited in Hangul, the Korean word processor. A public notice has to be turned into an application form, or an old document that only survives as a PDF needs revising.
Until now the options were to install Hancom Office, or to upload the file to an online converter. The first costs money and is awkward outside Windows. The second means handing a document you may not be allowed to share to somebody else’s server.
This tool does neither. The Hangul document engine runs as WebAssembly inside this browser. The engine is downloaded once, and after that nothing about your file leaves the device.
A real document, not a picture of one
Pages are not screenshotted and pasted into a Hangul file. A blank Hangul document is created and paragraphs and tables are written into it one by one. Open the result in Hangul and you can delete, retype and rewrite the text.
Paragraphs, headings, tables and page breaks all come across. Once the file is built, the engine reads it back and checks the paragraph count still matches, and tells you on screen when it does not. A quietly broken result should not be something you discover later.
Images, stamps and signatures are pulled out of the page and written in as well, though they land in reading order rather than at their original coordinates. What does not come across is the exact placement on the page, the fonts and the text colour. That information does not survive in a PDF as document structure.
Why HWPX rather than HWP
HWPX stores a Hangul document as XML inside a zip. Korean public bodies are required to use it from 2026, and because the structure is published, other programs can read it too.
If the file has to open in a version of Hangul older than 2007, use the HWP tool instead. The two formats are two containers for the same document, so the contents are identical.
Scanned PDFs cannot be turned back
A PDF made by photographing paper or running it through an office scanner is a single picture per page. Your eyes see letters, but the file contains none. There is nothing to pull out, so there is nothing to rebuild.
The tool says so plainly instead of handing you an empty file. If only some pages are scans, it names which page numbers came back empty. Reading text out of pictures is not something this tool does.
Common questions
Do I need Hancom Office installed?+
No. The engine that reads and writes Hangul documents runs as WebAssembly inside this browser. Windows is not required either, and it behaves the same on macOS and Linux.
Is my file uploaded?+
No. Apart from downloading the engine once, no request leaves the page. The PDF and the HWPX both stay on your device.
Can I edit the result in Hangul?+
Yes. The pages are written in as paragraphs and tables rather than pasted in as pictures, so you can delete, retype and rewrite freely.
Does it look identical to the PDF?+
No. Reading order, paragraphs, tables and page breaks come across, and images and stamps are carried over too, but a picture lands in reading order rather than at its original coordinates. The exact placement, the fonts and the text colour do not come across.
Does it work on a scanned PDF?+
No. A scan is a picture of a page and holds no text at all. Drop one in and the tool will tell you immediately.
HWP or HWPX, which should I pick?+
Follow whatever the recipient asks for. With no instruction, HWPX is the better default: it is the format Korean public bodies require and its structure is published.
This product was developed with reference to the HWP document file (.hwp) specification published by Hancom.