I Can't Encode Korean (or UTF-8) in a QR Code

I Can't Encode Korean (or UTF-8) in a QR Code

QR Code was developed in Japan by Denso (for Toyota) and uses ASCII + Japanese (Kanji) as default character set. Later this has been changed by ISO to Latin-1. So your barcode reader tries to decode data in a QR Code either with the JIS X 0208 / JIS X 0201 or with the Latin-1 character set. Unless it is a barcode reader app or a special software decoder it does not look for UTF-8 or other character sets (except you use the ECI protocol)!

Possible solutions:

• A keyboard wedge barcode reader may be configured to use UTF-8. Otherwise it will always use the default JIS or Latin-1 character set. The ECI protocol would allow different character sets but the reader must support this protocol.
• A serial barcode reader (attached to COM Port or Virtual COM Port driver through USB) transmits the data as sequence of Bytes. The data processing software can decode the data stream and decide how to decode it - as JIS, Latin-1, UTF-8 or as Korean MB character set.
• If your barcode reader supports Korean (or you use a serial barcode reader) you also can try to set the TBarCode code page property to Korean instead of UTF-8.
• Smartphone reader apps by default try to decode QR codes with UTF-8. So chances are high that it works with a smartphone reader and codepage=UTF-8 adjusted in TBarCode.