Halfwidth Hangul Letter Rieul

ﾩ is the narrow compatibility form of ㄹ, the Korean rieul consonant. It preserves a legacy layout distinction; it is not a different sound or a substitute for a complete syllable. In ordinary Korean, ㄹ or a full Hangul syllable is the readable form.

The historical trail includes the 1974 KS C 5601 standard, which described 7-bit N-byte Hangul with 51 elements. A Unicode proposal linked the halfwidth layout to Annex 4 of the 1987 standard and noted a near-identical Xerox set tied to 1982.

Why the narrow form exists

Older systems needed Korean elements that fit one-byte, fixed-grid layouts. N-byte Hangul assigned a one-byte code to each consonant or vowel, then software assembled those elements into syllables. The narrow width reflects that engineering context, not a new Korean letter.

Its resemblance to Japanese halfwidth kana is typographic. Here, “halfwidth” describes a narrow compatibility form; the character’s later role is preservation and conversion. Compatibility normalization maps ﾩ to ㄹ, removing the width distinction.

Entering and displaying ﾩ

A 2017 Unicode proposal reported no direct entry path for halfwidth jamo in Korean input methods. In programming, \uFFA9 identifies the character; in HTML, use ﾩ.

Placing ﾩ beside other jamo does not make a standard Hangul syllable block. Convert it to standard jamo and compose a syllable if that is what your text requires.