Abstract
Hanji is a traditional Korean handmade paper, made of bast fibers of the paper mulberry. Its fiber furnish is much more expensive than wood fiber furnish. Hanji with a low basis weight requires additional opacity and smoothness for better writing and printing. Filler such as calcium carbonate can not be used to raise the opacity of Hanji because of its low retention in low basis weight paper and the high freeness of the Hanji fiber furnish. Addition of red algae pulp, which is prepared from marine red algae to the Hanji fiber furnish negated retention problems happening in the case of mineral filler addition, and produced a substantial improvement in the opacity and smoothness of Hanji. The higher retention was due to the much larger size of the red algae fibers compared to the mineral fillers. The improvement in opacity and smoothness were also due to the shape of the red algae fibers: that red algae fibers are narrower in widths and shorter in lengths than wood fibers results in increased surface area and smoothness.
