I used to have a lot of trouble opening files, as the two favorite formats among students are .docx (What do you mean you can’t open it? It’s MICROSOFT!) and .hwp, the propreitary file format for the word processing application most widely used among Koreans… but used by nobody else on earth. (What do you mean, you prefer formats used globally and accessible from multiple programs?)
I’m running Hangeul 2005, but there are instructions for the 2008 version here (or here, recommended at Marmot’s), and as for .docx files, a simple tweak should render your OpenOffice capable of opening those files, if you follow the instructions here.
(And for those of you who are naughty, some bad person has posted the workaround that renders the two month trial of HWP 2005 a permanent install. I’m of two minds with this, since (a) I’d rather not be thieving things, but (b) it’s ridiculous to pay full price for [bad] software that one almost never uses just to deal with the few people who insist on using a proprietary format, and (c) anyone who uses security that wimpy [in Linux of all systems!] is pretty much begging someone to just implement the workaround. But it’s wrong, bad, horrid, etc.)
Now if only someone could introduce a hack that could trick the Korean web into thinking I was running Windows and Internet Explorer — not just running it under Wine, but really using IE in Windows — life would be a lot easier. Maybe a few versions down the road?