What 부 means
No; the whole Korean word decides.
Different Hanja—Chinese characters also used to write Korean words—can share the reading 부. The surrounding word shows which one is meant.
Why is 부 one block?
It combines two Hangul letters into one syllable block.
Hangul arranges letters into compact blocks for syllables. Records of the script date to 1443; an explanatory book, 훈민정음, dates to 1446. Those dates concern Hangul, not the first appearance of this exact block. Unicode can encode 부 as one ready-made syllable character or as conjoining Jamo—letters that join to form a syllable. The two forms can look identical while containing different character sequences.
부 alone is neutral; the full word sets the tone.
An isolated 부 does not mean “father” or “wealth.”
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsQuestions people ask
1Why does 부 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type 부
부\BD80Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.