Korean Syllables (Hangul Characters)

What looks like a single Korean character is a syllable block: two or three letters of the Hangul alphabet stacked into one square. 가 is ㄱ g on the left and ㅏ a on the right, 고 is ㄱ with the flat vowel ㅗ o underneath, and 각 is 가 with a final ㄱ, the batchim (받침), sitting at the bottom. Every block begins with a consonant; when the syllable starts with a vowel sound, the silent circle ㅇ holds that place, so 아 is simply a and 이 is i. The letters themselves are on the Korean Letters (Hangul) page; this page is for the finished blocks.

Korean dictionaries sort blocks letter by letter: first by the initial consonant in the order ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ, then by the vowel ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ, then by the final. That is the order used here: 가 각 간 갇 갈 갉 갊 감 갑 값 갓 갔 강 갖 갗 같 갚 갛, then 개 객 갠 … and so on through 힝. Unicode encodes the syllables in exactly this order too, so 가 is U+AC00 and the very last one, 힣, is U+D7A3. North Korea sorts the alphabet differently, but the blocks are the same.

The first group is the chart Korean children and foreign learners both start with: the 14 basic consonants down the side, the 10 basic vowels across the top, and the open syllable in each cell. Read it aloud row by row, 가 갸 거 겨 고 교 구 규 그 기, 나 냐 너 녀 노 뇨 누 뉴 느 니, and you have the sound system in your mouth before you learn a single word.

Why 2,350 syllables and not 11,172

Hangul can spell 19 initial consonants × 21 vowels × 28 finals (27 consonants or none) = 11,172 possible blocks, and since Unicode 2.0 (1996) every one of them has its own code point in the Hangul Syllables block U+AC00 to U+D7A3. Most of them never occur in a Korean word: nobody writes 뷁 or 꺠 except as a joke. The national character standard KS X 1001 (published in 1987 as KS C 5601) chose 2,350 syllables that cover ordinary Korean text, and that set is what this page lists, derived exactly from the standard's EUC-KR code table.

The choice is practical. A page of 11,172 blocks is a wall; a page of the 2,350 that actually appear in words is a reference you can scan, and every one of them is in the dictionary order above. The 2,350 are also what Korean fonts are built around: many web fonts ship a "2,350 subset" to keep downloads small, and older systems, keyboards and bitmap fonts supported nothing else. If a syllable you need is not here, say 똠 from the 1990 drama title 똠방각하 or the slang syllable 뷁, it still exists in Unicode and has its own page on this site; search for it by typing it.

A famous consequence: in the 1980s and 90s Koreans met names and words that their computers literally could not type, because KS X 1001 lacked the block. The Johab encoding and then Unicode fixed that, which is why modern Korean text can contain any of the 11,172, while this list keeps to the standard 2,350 that real words are made of.

Reading the chart: the sounds behind the blocks

Across a vowel row the first consonant changes: 가 나 다 라 마 바 사 아 자 차 카 타 파 하 is ga na da ra ma ba sa a ja cha ka ta pa ha, the Korean equivalent of reciting the alphabet. Down a consonant row the vowel changes: 가 ga, 갸 gya, 거 geo (an open "uh"), 겨 gyeo, 고 go, 교 gyo, 구 gu, 규 gyu, 그 geu (lips spread, as in "good" without rounding), 기 gi. Tall vowels (ㅏ ㅓ ㅣ and their y-forms) stand to the right of the consonant; flat vowels (ㅗ ㅜ ㅡ) go underneath, so 고 and 구 are taller and narrower than 가 and 거.

The doubled consonants make tense syllables: 까 따 빠 싸 짜 are said with a tight throat and no puff of air, and they change meaning. 달 dal is the moon, 탈 tal a mask, 딸 ttal a daughter; 불 bul is fire, 풀 pul grass, 뿔 ppul a horn. The groups for ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ are shorter than the others because fewer words need them, which is exactly what the 2,350 set reflects.

The final consonant adds the closing sound: 간 gan, 갈 gal, 감 gam, 갑 gap, 강 gang. Only seven sounds are possible at the end of a block, so 갓 갔 갖 갗 같 갛 all end in the same t-like stop when said alone; the spelling matters because the hidden letter comes back before a vowel (같이 is gachi). The double finals such as 값 gap "price", 닭 dak "chicken" and 앉 in 앉다 "to sit" are here too, in their dictionary places.

How to type Korean syllables and make them display

You never type a block directly: you type its letters and the input method assembles them. On Windows add Korean in Settings and switch with the Han/Yeong key or right Alt; the standard 2-set (두벌식) layout puts consonants on the left half of the keyboard and vowels on the right, so 한 is typed g-k-s on a US keyboard. macOS has the same 2-Set Korean layout; on iPhone and Android you can also pick the Cheonjiin 10-key pad, which builds every vowel from three keys ㅣ ㆍ ㅡ. For one word, copying from this page is faster than switching layouts.

Hangul needs a Korean font. Windows ships Malgun Gothic, macOS and iOS Apple SD Gothic Neo, Android Noto Sans CJK KR, and all of them draw the full 11,172 syllables, so anything you copy here will show on a current phone or computer. Blank boxes mean the device or app has no CJK font at all, or an older subset font that covers only these 2,350; the free Noto Sans KR and Nanum fonts from Google Fonts fix that. In a text editor, Unicode normalisation can silently split a block into its letters (한 into ㅎ ㅏ ㄴ as combining jamo); it still reads the same, but search and filenames treat the two forms differently, which is the classic macOS-to-Windows Korean filename problem.