Halfwidth Hangul Ssangsiot

Enter U+FFB6 with an input method that preserves the character.

This is a halfwidth form of the Korean consonant ㅆ, called ssangsiot. Its width is part of its encoded identity; it does not represent a different sound. A regular Korean keyboard may enter ordinary ㅆ or a complete syllable instead.

Use ordinary ㅆ in normal Korean text. Use ﾶ when a legacy-width string or a software test requires this exact character.

Why does it change or appear as a box?

Normalization can change the character; a font may not support it.

Compatibility normalization can remove width distinctions. This character maps to ㅆ, which in turn maps to the Hangul leading consonant ᄊ. NFKC and NFKD can therefore change the stored text even when the resulting letters look related.

A 2020 Noto CJK issue reported halfwidth Hangul missing from a font set: one Android test showed empty boxes, while Windows and Word displayed a fallback at the wrong width. Such a display points to font coverage, not a different meaning.

Why was halfwidth Hangul created?

It supported older Korean character-code layouts.

A 2017 Unicode proposal traced the halfwidth Hangul arrangement to Annex 4, a 7-bit Hangul jamo character code in KS C 5601/KS X 1001 from 1987 and later versions. The forms let mixed-width East Asian text round-trip through those older encodings.

The related ㅆ is a compatibility jamo; ᄊ is its conjoining leading-consonant form. Compatibility jamo served as conversion targets when mapping Hangul to KS X 1001, a historical mapping. Treat ﾶ as legacy-data material, not ordinary Korean prose.