Hangul syllable Baek

The word decides: 백 can mean “hundred,” “white,” or “bag.”

The Chinese-derived characters used in Korean, called Hanja, include 百 for “hundred” and 白 for “white”; both are read 백 in these words. In Go (called baduk in Korean), 백 names the white side, and 백돌 means a white stone. In 쇼핑백, 백 is the “bag” part of a loanword.

A recognizable written ancestor appears as ᄇᆡᆨ in Dongguk Jeongun (1448), a Korean pronunciation dictionary. Hangeul was created in 1443 to make reading and writing Korean accessible. The Hanja 百 and 白 are roots behind two readings, not earlier shapes of the Hangul block.

How does Hangul build 백 from its letters?

Hangul groups an initial consonant, vowel, and final consonant into one block.

Hangul letters, or jamo, fit inside syllable blocks: ㅂ starts this one, ㅐ is its vowel, and ㄱ closes it. So 백 is one written syllable made from three letter components.

Unicode can store 백 as one precomposed syllable or as the equivalent sequence ㅂ + ㅐ + ㄱ. Fonts may position the components differently; that display change does not change the reading.