Definition
A door or gate; the movable barrier used to open or close an entrance to a room or building.
Example
문을 열고 방 안으로 들어갔어요.
Show translation
I opened the door and went into the room.
Etymology
문 derives from Middle Korean 門 (mun), a Sino-Korean borrowing from Chinese 門 (mén, "gate, door"), widely adopted across East Asian writing systems. The hanja 門 depicts two door panels side by side and remains a productive morpheme in modern Korean compound words such as 정문 (front gate), 후문 (back gate), and 문화 (culture, lit. "the transformation that passes through a gate").
Cultural note
In traditional Korean architecture (hanok), the outer gate (대문, 大門) marked the boundary between the public street and the private home — closing it was a meaningful social act. Even today, the phrase 문을 두드리다 ("to knock on a door") is used figuratively to mean seeking an opportunity or making a request, much like "knocking on someone's door" in English. Watch out: 문 can also mean "writing" or "sentence" in Sino-Korean compounds (e.g., 작문, composition), so context is key.