Korean Free Font Licences — What "Free for Commercial Use" Still Excludes

It helps to separate three questions. Is the download free? May it be used in work that makes money? And for which specific uses?

Most Korean free fonts clear the first two. The third is where it breaks down. A font can permit print but not logos, or on-screen use but not printing onto goods you sell — all while being labelled free for commercial use.

**Logos and brand marks.** The most common one. A large share of fonts released by companies explicitly prohibit use in a logo or trademark, because setting a mark in someone else's typeface muddies the rights to that mark. Signage and business cards may be fine while the logo is not.

**Printing on goods for sale.** T-shirts, mugs, stickers — anywhere the lettering is the product rather than a label on it. Some terms allow promotional use but treat merchandise as a separate negotiation.

**Redistributing the font file.** Whether self-hosting a web font counts as redistribution is the grey area. Most permit it, but some terms prohibit putting the file somewhere it can be downloaded by anyone.

**Embedding.** Including the font in a PDF, an app or an ebook. Embedding is effectively unavoidable when sending files to a printer, so it happens without thinking — worth checking whether the terms mention it.

**Modification and derivatives.** Not adjusting tracking, but altering letterforms to make a new font. Open licences generally allow this while requiring a name change; bespoke terms more often prohibit it.

Fonts released under the SIL Open Font License — Pretendard, KoPub, the Nanum family — cover a wide range: commercial work, logos, printing on products, embedding, and modification.

What OFL prohibits amounts to one thing: **you cannot sell the font itself.** Modified versions also have to be released under a different name. Neither constrains ordinary design work.

So if the use is undecided, or likely to spread across several things later, starting with an OFL font removes most of the checking.

Open the original page — the foundry, not the directory. Identify the licence: if it is OFL you are usually done. If it is bespoke terms, look for the prohibitions first. The list of what is forbidden is always shorter and clearer than the list of what is allowed.

Then check whether what you are about to do appears on that list. If it does not, you are generally fine. When genuinely unclear, ask — most companies distributing a font have somewhere to ask.

Write down what you found. Font name, source, and the date you checked is enough. Terms change, and what matters later is being able to show what they said at the time.