This paper systematically examines 527 sets of morphologically similar characters in the International Chinese Language Education Chinese Language Proficiency Level Standards. Out of which, there were 140 unique sets of close characters that could be classified into four types based on stroke count, stroke form, stroke combination, and stroke position. The eye-tracking experiments revealed that Korean native speakers share the same processing mechanism for the four types of unique Chinese characters as Chinese native speakers. The recognition rate of the four types of unique characters is consistent, and the processing of unique characters aligns with the hypothesis of partial processing. This indicates that Korean native speakers possess similar cognitive processing mechanisms for Chinese characters and enjoy the advantage of “word sense”.Korean native speakers exhibit longer response times in recognizing the four types of strokes, along with lower recognition rates for correctly identifying stroke position corresponding to words. Additionally, the first gaze time for stroke position was shorter compared to the other three types, while the stroke position and stroke form types were found to have a significantly higher number of gaze points compared to the stroke combination relationship and stroke number categories. This study indicates that Korean native speakers with intermediate to advanced proficiency in Chinese have not yet achieved the level of native Chinese speakers. Additionally, there is a gradient in the difficulty of acquiring specific features of close characters with stroke position and stroke form being more challenging to acquire compared to stroke combination relationship and stroke quantity. The paper offers a thorough analysis of the underlying reasons and presents several teaching recommendations.