Korean text won't display

[kater49449336]

I am having trouble with a text translated into Korean displaying properly in Indesign (and PDF exports).

The file was laid out in English first. I saved a copy, then pasted in Korean text and converted the text to YuGothic, but all I'm seeing is x-ed out boxes.

I followed the same procedure as I already used to swap out the English text with Chinese text (in PingFang) and Japanese text (in YuMincho). Those both worked fine.

The malfunctioning Korean text is not highlighted in pink, the way it appears when one doesn't *have* the selected font. Instead it's appearing as boxes. YuGothic appears in my dropbox list of fonts as an Open Type font, just like YuMincho and PingFang do.

What am I missing? How can I get this font to display properly?

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

I don't know YuGothic, but if I toss that term into Google the top link identifies it as  Japanese font. Not all Japanese fonts have Korean glyphs. You should try marking it as Malgun Gothic (if on Windows) or as AppleGothic (if on Mac) and see if it renders then.

For what it's worth, both operating systems tend to default to Japanese fonts whenever they are confronted with CJK text.

[Joel Cherney]

Also: PingMing is a Chinese font. And since it's supposedly a new Chinese font for macOS (or maybe iOS? or both? I can't tell), then I now know which platform you are on and can guide you to additional Hangul font choices if you need assistance with that.

[kater49449336]

Out of curiosity, what are some other Hangul fonts one might have hanging around in Adobe Creative Suite on Mac computers?

[Subi Omu]

Adobe has released high quality free font, Source Han Sans Korean and Source Han Serif Korean with seven weights family. Available from Typekit or GitHub.

https://typekit.com/fonts/source-han-sans-korean

https://typekit.com/fonts/source-han-serif-korean

https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-han-serif

https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-han-sans

[denisem87961158]

Also tried this font.  Only getting Boxes with X in them for each character

[denisem87961158]

Also "Korean" does not show as option in language dropdown in Indesign?

[David W. Goodrich]

Kozuka is a Japanese font, which means that it shares many Chinese forms ("kanji") with Korean, but I wouldn't count on it including all the chars. in Korean hangul.  I don't know about CC versions, but older Western-language versions of InDesign didn't come with the attributes for CJK languages built-in.  However, the first time you import a word-processor file containing text set to Chinese, Japanese or Korean it would pick up that attribute and make it available thereafter.

[denisem87961158]

How do I mark it as AppleGothic or otherwise?  I've selected the Korean Font (Kozuka) which is in my Typekit.  Set Korean as an optional language on my computer. Nothing seems to work.

[kater49449336]

AppleGothic worked!! Thank you!!! (I thought my Korean contact directed me to YuGothic but perhaps I misunderstood.)

[Joel Cherney]

Well, with Adobe you get Adobe Myungjo and Adobe Gothic. Not exciting, but reliable. From macOS you should also have Apple SD Gothic Neo, with a pretty wide array of weights. Also you get a series of "Nanum" fonts including a brush script and a pen script. If you scroll down in your font list in ID to the place where Korean fonts are housed, you will almost certainly find some more.

[Grundoon Groundhog]

Thanks, I did find one.

[abhijeett89122812]

Malgun Gothic font family will work

[Grundoon Groundhog]

I just tried to find Malgun Gothic: no matches found. I 'm having the same problem in InDesign on my MAC.

[Joel Cherney]

Malgun Gothic is a default font for Windows, so it's not surprising that you don't find it on your Mac. If you look a few messages up in this thread you'll find names for default Mac Korean fonts.