The Korean language has used various writing systems with varying orthographies and punctuation over time. Writing systems that saw significant use for Korean include Hanja, Idu, Kugyŏl, Hyangch'al, and the Korean alphabet.

The Korean alphabet is now the dominant system in use in both North and South Korea. That alphabet is called Hangul internationally, Hangeul in South Korea, and Choson'gŭl in North Korea. Hangul orthography and punctuation have changed over time. The original punctuation system, kuduchŏm, was quite limited; circles were largely used to mark significant breaks in reading. Spaces between words were not used. Tone markings [ko] were used to indicate supposed tones of Middle Korean, although some scholars argued that Korean was instead a pitch-accent language.

Hangul punctuation practices were in flux until the late 19th and 20th centuries, when significant standardization efforts began. Western punctuation practices were largely adopted, although Hangul in both North and South Korea maintains some other East Asian and local practices.

In the traditional Korean system of writing, which was largely based on the Chinese writing system, punctuation was primarily used to make corrections or to help with the understanding of hanja, or Chinese characters. Some of the corrective punctuation marks included ⟨◦⟩ called 끼움표 (kki-umpyo), which was used for inserting, and ⟨▯⟩ called 삭제부 (sakjebu) which was used for deleting. The traditional writing system known as gugyeol, used punctuation to interpret Chinese characters in a way Korean speakers could understand. One of the marks used in gugyeol was a dot ⟨•⟩ called 역독점 (yeokdokjeom), which was used to indicate reading order. The conclusion of an idea or thought was indicated by starting a new line of characters from the top, as opposed to the western style punctuation of periods and commas which had not been introduced yet.

The original punctuation system was called kuduchŏm (구두점; 句讀點). In the 15th century, a small circle was used to mark major phrasal and sentential/clausal endings. If the circle was placed in the center after a syllable, it marked the end of a major break within a sentence. If it was placed in the right corner of the cell of the final syllable, it possibly indicated either the end of a sentence or a rising tone indicating a pause for that final character.

Tone markings [ko], called bangjeom or pangchŏm (방점; 傍點; lit. side dots), were originally used in Hangul to indicate tones. They were marked by dots to the left of a Hangul character:

The writers of the Haerye designed this system because they thought that Middle Korean had tones, similar to those of Chinese. However, a number of modern scholars disagree with this. Several argue that Middle Korean was a pitch-accent language that had pitches, possibly two: high and low.

Several scholars have argued that the tone marking system was overly influenced by Chinese linguistics. Lee and Ramsey emphasize that, while the tone system was not perfectly suited to Korean, it was and is still useful and "accurately [represents] the Korean data".