How to Open an HWP File Without Hangul (Tested: Word Shows Garbage, ONLYOFFICE Keeps the Table)

The short answer

If you only need to read the document, install Hancom's free viewer. If you need to edit it or turn it into a Word file or a PDF, use ONLYOFFICE, which is free and was the only non-Hancom program here that kept the document intact. If you can't install anything and the file ends in .hwpx, you can still see the first page by treating it as a ZIP file.

HWP or HWPX: check which one you were sent

Hangul saves two different formats. .hwp is a binary file inside an OLE compound container, the same kind of container old .doc files used. .hwpx is a ZIP archive full of XML, much like .docx. The extension usually tells you which is which, but the first bytes of the file settle it. In PowerShell:

Format-Hex -Path .\sample.hwp  | Select-Object -First 1
# 00000000   D0 CF 11 E0 A1 B1 1A E1 00 00 ...   ÐÏ.ࡱ.á   <- .hwp (OLE)

Format-Hex -Path .\sample.hwpx | Select-Object -First 1
# 00000000   50 4B 03 04 14 00 00 00 00 00 ...   PK......   <- .hwpx (ZIP)

Those are the real first lines from the two test files, which Hangul 2024 saved from the same document: a title, two paragraphs, a two-row, three-column table and a closing line. Inside the .hwp, the FileHeader stream starts with the text HWP Document File and records format version 5.1.1.0. The .hwpx contains a mimetype entry that reads application/hwp+zip. Knowing which one you have matters for the last method below, which only works on .hwpx.

What happened in Microsoft Word

Word is the first thing most people try. The test PC has Word 16. It lists six file converters, and two of them are for Hangul: their names in the Korean interface are 아래아 한글 2.0-97 and 아래아 한글 2.1/2.5, that is, Hangul 2.0 to 97 and Hangul 2.1/2.5. Nothing for anything newer.

• The .hwp opened without an error in 0.3 seconds, but the document was the file's raw bytes read as text: 15,873 characters starting with ÐÏ.ࡱ.á, the OLE signature, and zero tables.
• The .hwpx did not open at all. Word stopped with the message that the file is corrupt (파일이 손상되었습니다 in the Korean interface). A ZIP that is not a Word document looks broken to Word.

So the fact that Word has a Hangul converter does not help with files from any recent version of Hangul. Use one of the options below instead.

ONLYOFFICE: open it, then save as DOCX or PDF

ONLYOFFICE is a free office suite. Its desktop editors gained HWP and HWPX support in version 8.3 (February 2025), and ONLYOFFICE's own guide says the way to get a Word file is to open the HWP document and save it in another format such as DOCX or PDF.

1. 1Download ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors from onlyoffice.com. The Windows installer I used was version 9.4.0, about 356 MB, signed by Ascensio System SIA (the company behind ONLYOFFICE).
2. 2Open the .hwp or .hwpx file in it.
3. 3Save a copy as DOCX if you want to keep editing in Word, or as PDF if you only need to send or print it.

For the test I ran the converter that ships inside the app (x2t.exe in its converter folder, next to a HWPFile.dll) on both test files. Each became a 7,642-byte DOCX in about 0.1 seconds. Opened in Word, both had 12 paragraphs and one table of 2 rows by 3 columns, with every cell where it belonged: 이름, 학년, 반 on the first row and 홍길동, 3, 2 on the second. Word then saved them as PDF without complaint.

Hancom Office Viewer: the official free option

Hancom, the company that makes Hangul, offers its own viewer. According to Hancom's download page, it is free for personal or home use, for non-commercial purposes. Companies and organisations need Hancom's written permission because that counts as redistribution, and the viewer comes with no customer support. The Windows version needs Windows 10 or later, and there are versions for Mac, Android and iOS. The supported file list starts with *.hwp, *.hwpx, *.hwt and *.hml.

Because it comes from Hancom itself, it is the option most likely to show the layout as the author made it. It does not edit, though, so if you need a Word or PDF copy, ONLYOFFICE is the route. I did not test the viewer, because the test PC already has the full Hangul installed.

No install at all: peek inside an .hwpx

An .hwpx is a ZIP file, and Hangul stores a preview inside it. Windows can open ZIP files on its own, but only when the name ends in .zip: PowerShell's Expand-Archive refused the original name with a message that only .zip is supported.

1. 1Make a copy of the .hwpx file, so the original stays untouched.
2. 2Rename the copy so it ends in .zip. If you can't see file extensions, turn them on in File Explorer (View > Show > File name extensions).
3. 3Open the ZIP and go into the Preview folder.
4. 4PrvImage.png is a picture of the first page. PrvText.txt is the beginning of the text.

In the test file, PrvImage.png was a 724 x 1024 image of page 1 with the table drawn in, and PrvText.txt held the text with table cells marked like <이름><학년><반>. The catch is length. I saved a longer document of 300 paragraphs, about 12,300 characters, and its preview held only the first 1,022 characters, which was 24 paragraphs. The .hwp version had exactly the same 1,022-character preview, but .hwp is not a ZIP, so you need a tool to reach it.

The full text of an .hwpx is in Contents/section0.xml, readable in a browser or text editor but buried in XML tags. For anything longer than a page, use one of the programs above.

Getting the text out with a script

If you have many HWP files and want their text or tables in a program, that is a different job. The separate guide on this site, 'Python and HWP files', covers it: .hwpx with nothing but Python's standard library, .hwp with the olefile package, and Hangul's own automation for tables and batch PDF export.

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