Hangul syllable Ddeols

It is a Korean syllable, not a pictorial reaction. The block combines ᄄ as its initial consonant, ᅥ as its vowel and ᆳ as its compound final. These component letters, called jamo, spell a syllable; they do not make a picture or provide a word's meaning by themselves. With a Korean IME active, enter ㄸ, ㅓ, ㄹ, then ㅅ to build it. Unicode also treats the decomposed sequence 떬 as equivalent to 떬; normalization can switch between those spellings.

Hangul was developed under King Sejong to make Korean easier to write than by relying on Chinese characters. The earliest court record of its development is from December 1443, when a royal project is described as creating 28 letters. Hunminjeongeum, the book explaining the letters, was completed in September 1446 after three years of work.

Before Hangul, Korean writers used Chinese characters and adapted systems such as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal to represent Korean words and grammar. The alphabet was first called Hunminjeongeum, the title of the book explaining it; Hangeul is the common name in South Korea, while Choseongul is preferred in North Korea.