Korean worker character

巬 means a worker or laborer in Korean historical writing. It appears in occupational compounds—character pairs that name a job or role—so it points to a person at work, not an action or mood.

It belongs to a Korean practice of joining or shortening hanja, Chinese-derived characters used in Korean, for practical writing. The earliest cited record is in the Goryeosa, a history of Goryeo, under King Wonjong's 15th year. Later examples appear in Daemyeongnyul jikhae and Gyeongguk daejeon, Korean legal texts.

Why do dictionaries disagree about 巬?

巬 is recorded as a Korean variant of 巭, while its cited examples are occupational. A character reference marks 巬 as a customary variant of 巭. The entry for 巭 also lists effort or study, but that broader sense is not directly established for 巬; its examples 丁巬 and 人巬 are occupational compounds.

Korean hanja readers can connect it with the Korean syllable 부, roughly “bu.” A Taiwanese variant-character dictionary instead labels 巬 as Korean and points readers to 巭. If a lone 巬 arrives in a message, treat it as a character or historical-vocabulary reference.