What 동 means
Read the full word. Hangul groups letters into syllable blocks; 동 can represent roots for east, neighborhood, sameness, or a building unit.
The Chinese character 洞, called Hanja in Korean, marked villages in the Goryeo period (a Korean dynasty); twentieth-century reforms formalized its administrative use.
The 1443 Hunminjeongeum document introduced Hangul to write Korean speech; an explanatory book followed in 1446. Those dates concern the script, not this block’s first appearance. As of 2026, Seoul distinguishes legal districts (법정동) from service areas (행정동).
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Who writes 동
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What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsEast or eastern direction.
Related characters
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Questions people ask
1Why does 동 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.
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How to type or find 동
- Search it as
- dong · Korean dong · 동 meaning
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
동\B3D9Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.