RFC 1557 (rfc1557) - Page 3 of 5

Korean Character Encoding for Internet Messages

RFC 1557               Korean Character Encoding           December 1993


   one-of-94       =  ; (41-176, 33.-126.)

   CHAR            =      ; ( 0-177, 0.-127.)

   text            = 

MIME and RFC 1522 Considerations

   The name to be used for the Hangul encoding scheme in the contents is
   "ISO-2022-KR".  This name when used in MIME message form would be:

                Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-2022-kr

   Since the Hangul encoding is done with 7 bit format in nature, the
   Content-Transfer-Encoding-header does not need to be used. However,
   while using the Hangul encoding, current Hangul message softwares
   does not support Base64 or Quoted-Printable encoding applied on
   already encoded Hangul messages.

   The Hangul encoded in the header part of the message is Korean EUC
   [EUC-KR].  In the EUC-KR encoding, the bytes with 8th bit set will be
   recognized as KSC-5601 characters.  To use Hangul in the header part,
   according to the method proposed in RFC 1522, the encoded Hangul are
   "B" or "Q" encoded. When doing so, the name to be used will be EUC-
   KR.

Background Information

   The Hangul encoding system is based on the ISO 2022 [ISO2022]
   environment according to its 4/4 announcement.  However, the Hangul
   encoding does not include the announcement's escape sequence.

   The KSC 5601 used in this document is, in definition, identical to
   the KSC 5601-1987, KSC 5601-1989 and KSC 5601-1992's 94x94 octet
   definition.  Therefore, any revision that refers to KSC-5601 after
   1992 is to be considered as having the same meaning.

   At present, the Hangul encoding system is based on the experience
   acquired from the former widely used "N-Byte Hangul" among UNIX
   users.  Actually, the encoding method, "N-Byte Hangul", using SO and
   SI was the encoding method used in SDN before KSC 5601 was made a
   national standard.

   This code is intended to be used for the information interchange of
   Hangul messages; any other use of the code is not considered
   appropriate.




Choi, Chon & Park