Which font is more traditional?
Traditional character forms, also known as "old-style" characters, are those that have been passed down from ancient times and were standardized during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Traditional character forms do not have a unified standard; they are often based on the 《Kangxi Dictionary》 as one of the reference points.
The Hanzi used by Korea, Japan, and Vietnam originated from China, so their Hanzi characters are very similar to Chinese. In particular, on the Korean Peninsula, in order to maintain authenticity, they directly use traditional Chinese character forms:
In 1946, Japan had just been defeated and began to experiment with abolishing Chinese characters under the leadership of Allied forces. They published "When to Use Chinese Characters," which stipulated that only the characters listed in the document could be used, resulting in a significant simplification of the Chinese writing system. However, due to widespread controversy, this policy was discontinued in the 1980s.
In China, during the 1930s, the government attempted to simplify Chinese characters, but this was met with opposition and failed. Starting in the 1950s, mainland China gradually simplified its characters, making significant changes to both their form and meaning, eventually leading to the current standard. Singapore also directly adopted the mainland Chinese simplified character standard.
Although Taiwan uses traditional Chinese characters, it introduced a standard font in the 1980s and made adjustments to many strokes. Similarly, Hong Kong also adjusted the shape of Chinese characters in the 1980s. Therefore, although both Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional characters, they differ from the traditional form, and due to their separate implementations without coordination, many characters are not completely consistent between Hong Kong and Taiwan. Macau directly refers to Hong Kong's standard, but with slight differences.
Due to the difficulty Koreans faced in learning Chinese characters, they created their own script,谚文 (Pyongyang), in the 15th century. However, the upper classes considered this script shameful, so it was primarily used by ordinary people, while official documents and education continued to use Chinese characters. It wasn't until after World War II that North Korea, now known as North Korea, completely abandoned the use of Chinese characters.
Vietnam also used Chinese characters in the past. After becoming a French colony in the 19th century, it gradually switched to using alphabetic writing, and after independence, it completely abolished Chinese characters. Therefore, in both Korea and Vietnam, people will not intentionally learn or use Chinese characters unless they are studying ancient texts.
After World War II, South Korea (now known as South Korea) did not eliminate Hanzi (Chinese characters) as aggressively as the North. Because many specialized terms required the use of Hanzi to be clearly expressed, South Korea continued to use Hanzi alongside Korean script until the 1980s. Subsequently, there was a continuous back-and-forth between using and abolishing Hanzi, with the frequency of Hanzi gradually decreasing but never reaching zero. However, South Korea only alternated between "using" and "not using" Hanzi without changing their form. As a result, the Hanzi font used in South Korea became the one closest to traditional Hanzi.
If you are using traditional Chinese characters to maintain authenticity, you can use the Kangxi Dictionary font, or choose a Korean-style font.
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