Halfwidth Hangul Letter A

It represents the Hangul vowel ㅏ in a legacy compatibility form. In ordinary Korean writing, use the familiar ㅏ or a syllable containing that vowel; ￂ is mainly useful when preserving or converting older encoded text.

The character belongs to a set designed for older Korean code and information-exchange systems, where narrow and fullwidth characters could coexist. A Unicode proposal traces a near-identical set to the KS C 5601-1982 standard and says the U+FFxx arrangement appears in an annex to KS C 5601/KS X 1001 from 1987 onward. Those dates describe the code-set trail, not proof of when this exact character was first used. The proposal also explains that Unicode retained the forms for compatibility with older data.

How do I type ￂ?

Use a Unicode escape; Korean input methods do not offer this form. A 2017 Unicode proposal reported that Korean input methods do not provide halfwidth Jamo. For normal Korean, type ㅏ or the syllable you need. For a file, test, or conversion that specifically requires U+FFC2, use an escape such as HTML ￂ, CSS \FFC2, or JavaScript/JSON \uFFC2.

Why does ￂ show as a box?

The font may not contain this character. A font can draw it narrowly, omit it, or fall back to a box or a glyph with the wrong width. A Noto CJK issue filed in January 2020 documented missing halfwidth Hangul coverage and these display problems in affected builds. If you need ordinary Korean text, use ㅏ or the relevant syllable; if you need this exact character, use a font that supports it.