A Comparison Analysis Between ResNET50 and XCeption for Handwritten Hangeul Character using Transfer Learning

Abstrak

The enthusiasm for Korean pop culture in Indonesia has contributed to a growing interest in learning the Korean language, including its writing system, Hangeul, which currently ranks as the 6th most studied language. Hangeul has a unique structure, where each character is arranged in syllabic blocks of consonants and vowel combinations. The main challenge in Korean character classification lies in the similarity between characters and the complex structure, making it more difficult for models to recognize. This study aims to compare two deep convolutional neural networks are ResNet50 and Xception, using transfer learning for handwritten Hangeul character classification. While previous studies have examined CNN-based character recognition, this study highlights the effectiveness of deeper architectures with limited yet augmented data. Unlike earlier works, it incorporates Grad-CAM visualizations, transfer learning with partial fine-tuning, and multiple train-test ratios to analyze model behavior. A total of 1,920 images across 24 classes were evaluated using 5-fold cross-validation, with extensive augmentation and preprocessing to simulate variation. The Machine Learning Life Cycle (MLLC) framework assessed model performance through accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and AUC. Both models achieved high performance, with ResNet50 consistently outperforming Xception in most folds, especially in precision and F1-score. ResNet50 achieved perfect scores (100%) across all metrics, while Xception also performed strongly with up to 99.74% accuracy. These results indicate that ResNet50 is more effective in classifying Korean letters on the dataset used in this study. For future research, a robustness evaluation can be applied using data that was not included in previous training or testing.