hwpkit

The pure-Python toolkit for Korean HWP & HWPX (Hancom Office) documents. Read it, edit it, extract its text — no Hancom, no Windows, no COM automation.

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Korean government, universities, courts, and most Korean enterprises run on HWP (한글, Hangul Word Processor) — the .hwp and .hwpx formats from Hancom Office. The rest of the world's tooling (python-docx, pdfplumber, unstructured, LibreOffice) can't read them, and the few that try need a Windows box with Hancom installed driving it over COM.

hwpkit is the missing piece. Pure Python, cross-platform, zero external apps — install it and start reading, editing, and extracting Korean documents in three lines.

pip install hwpkit[full]

from hwpkit import extract_text_from_file
print(extract_text_from_file("계약서.hwp"))      # …or .hwpx — auto-detected

That's it. No Hancom license. No Windows. No headless office server.

Why hwpkit

• 📄 Both formats, one API

  Binary .hwp (HWP 5.0) and XML .hwpx (OWPML). open_document() hands you the same editor either way — you never branch on format.

• 🐍 Pure Python, runs anywhere

  Linux, macOS, Windows, containers, Lambda. No Hancom, no pywin32, no COM, no LibreOffice subprocess.

• 🤖 Built for LLM / RAG

  Clean Korean text out of any .hwp/.hwpx, ready to chunk and embed — the preprocessing step your retrieval pipeline was missing.

• ✍️ Edit without corrupting

  Fill government & university forms, tick checkboxes, rewrite cells — and the binary container is rebuilt while preserving the directory tree Hancom validates on open.

• 🖋️ Insert seals & signatures

  Stamp a 도장/직인/서명 image into a form cell — into both .hwp and .hwpx.

• ⚖️ MIT licensed, tiny core

  Base install is just olefile; lxml and Pillow are optional extras, loaded lazily only when you use .hwpx or images.

One API, both formats

from hwpkit import open_document

doc = open_document("template.hwp")            # or "template.hwpx" — auto-detected
print(doc.describe())                           # list paragraphs to find field indices
doc.inject_text(24, "홍길동")                    # fill an empty cell
doc.swap_in_para_text(40, "□ 석사", "☑ 석사")    # tick a checkbox
doc.replace_text(75, "2026. 05. 19.")           # overwrite a cell
doc.place_image(42, "seal.png", width_mm=30)    # stamp a 도장 / signature
doc.save("out.hwp")

open_document returns an HwpFile or HwpxFile depending on the file — both expose the same methods.

Who uses this

• AI / RAG engineers indexing Korean documents into vector DBs.
• Gov-tech & RPA teams auto-filling 관공서·대학 forms at scale.
• Data engineers migrating HWP archives to text / structured data.
• Anyone who needs to edit a .hwp without clicking through Hancom.

Next steps

• Quickstart — extract, edit, and stamp in a few lines.
• hwpkit vs alternatives — how it compares to pyhwp, pyhwpx, and olefile.
• API reference — every public function and class.
• Internals — how .hwp and .hwpx map onto one model.

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Made by Ebenworks · MIT licensed.