What 읍 means
It marks a Korean town or an older formal ending. In 통진읍, it is the official town marker; read the whole name.
It was not separately invented. Hangul's history is recorded in 1443 and explained in 1446, so Korean could be written without relying on Chinese characters. Related jamo combine into one square block; separate jamo are an input or rendering state, not a new symbol. Archives place 읍 in the 1930 local-government reorganization as an administrative tier. As of 2025, -읍니다 is not current standard spelling; use -습니다 or -ㅂ니다. As of 2026, no reliable source isolates a first attestation for this exact block.
Official in names; historical in grammar.
Do not use -읍니다 as current standard spelling.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsQuestions people ask
1Why does 읍 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 읍
읍\C74DCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.