Word.ws English Dictionary

Hanahoe

Hanahoe proper noun: a surname from Irish.

Proper noun (1)

Hanahoe

  1. A surname from Irish.

Proper noun (2)

Hanahoe (uncountable)

  1. (historical) A secret society within the Republic of Korea Army led by Chun Doo-hwan from 1963 to 1993, which overthrew the Fourth Republic and was heavily involved in politics of the Fifth Republic of Korea.
    • Kim also reshaped civil-military relations. He chose an army chief of staff who was known to be without political aspirations and was not from the elite Hanahoe faction of the Korean Military Academy, whose members had intruded on politics in the past1997, Sunhyuk Kim, “State and Civil Society in South Korea's Democratic Consolidation: Is the Battle Really over?”, in Asian Survey, volume 37, number 12, page 1141
    • Like most businesses, in the army promotions are based on performance. Those in the military who fall short of expectations or have bad track records eventually fail to rise in the ranks.
      But Mr. Shin apparently failed because he was a member of Hanahoe, a secret brotherhood that all but ran the...2003 April 2, Brian Lee, “The Inner Circle”, in Korea JoongAng Daily

Examples of Hanahoe in a sentence

  • Park sponsored a select group of Korea Military Academy graduates called the Hanahoe (‘Group One’) to become his personal praetorian guard within the military.2022 October 25, Insoo Kim, David Kuehn, “The Ministry of National Defence in South Korea: Military dominance despite civilian supremacy?”...
  • To answer that question, we need to consider Hanahoe, as Chun’s clique was called, as well as Chun’s position at the head of the DSC.2023 November 30, Kwon Hyuk-chul, “How Chun Doo-hwan seized power in a coup — and why it’s unlikely to happen now”, in The Hankyoreh:

Origin of Hanahoe

Borrowed from Korean 하나회 (Hanahoe).

Questions about Hanahoe

What does Hanahoe mean?
Hanahoe means a surname from Irish.
How do you use Hanahoe in a sentence?
Park sponsored a select group of Korea Military Academy graduates called the Hanahoe (‘Group One’) to become his personal praetorian guard within the military.
What part of speech is Hanahoe?
Hanahoe is a proper noun.

Words near Hanahoe in the dictionary

  1. hanafized
  2. hanafizes
  3. hanafizing
  4. hanafuda
  5. hanahaki
  6. Hanahoe
  7. hanai
  8. Hanak
  9. Hanakian
  10. Hanakians
  11. Hanako

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Hanahoe (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Hanahoe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hanahoe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.