Hangul syllable 곤

Enter ㄱ, ㅗ, then ㄴ with Korean input enabled. The pieces are Korean letters called jamo: ㄱ is the initial consonant, ㅗ the vowel, and ㄴ the final consonant. Korean input software joins them into one syllable block.

Unicode represents Hangul both as precomposed syllable blocks and as jamo sequences. If ㄱㅗㄴ remains separate, the text may contain individual compatibility jamo, or the app may not compose the sequence for display.

What does 곤 mean?

It is a syllable; the full Korean word supplies the meaning. In 곤란, the word means difficulty or awkwardness; 곤궁 means poverty or hardship. In both, 곤 is one syllable inside a longer word, not a standalone translation.

In 곤란, the final ㄴ blends with the following ㄹ, so the word is pronounced roughly “gol-lan.”

Why is 곤 written as a block?

Hangul arranges Korean consonants and vowels into syllable blocks. Hangul was developed to represent Korean speech with consonant and vowel letters; earlier Korean writing relied heavily on Chinese characters used according to Korean reading conventions. Its rules for combining an initial consonant, vowel, and final consonant were officially promulgated in 1446. In 곤, those parts are ㄱ, ㅗ, and ㄴ.