A new classification method and recognition algorithms for printed Korean and Chinese character is studied for Korean text which contains both Korean and Chinese characters. The proposed method utilizes structural features of the vertical and horizontal vowel in Korean character. Korean characters are classified into 6 groups. Vowel and consonant are separated by means of different vowel extraction methods applied to each group. Time consuming thinning process is excluded. A modified crossing distance feature is measured to recognize extracted consonant. For Chinese character, an average of stroke crossing number is calculated on every characters, which allows the characters to be classified into several groups. A recognition process is then followed in terms of the stroke crossing number and the black dot rate of character. Classification between Korean and Chinese character was at the rate of 90.5%, and classification rate of Ming-style 2512 Korean characters was 90.0%. The recognition algorithm was applied on 1278 characters. The recognition rate was 92.2%. The densest class after classification of 4585 Chinese characters was found to contain only 124 characters, only 1/40 of total numbers. The recognition rate was 89.2%.