Hangul syllable 헒

It is a Hangul syllable that can also be a Korean noun.

The block combines initial consonant ㅎ, vowel ㅓ, and final cluster ㄻ. As the noun form of 헐다, a Korean verb meaning “to demolish,” 헒 names the act of demolishing. Sent alone, it leaves the object unstated. On the standard Korean 2-set keyboard, type G J F A; those keys enter ㅎ, ㅓ, ㄹ, ㅁ, with the last pair forming ㄻ.

Why are Hangul syllables written in blocks?

Each block groups the sounds of a Korean syllable.

King Sejong created 훈민정음, the writing system later called Hangul, so Korean speech could be written with letters designed for its sounds. The first official record of the system dates to 1443. An explanatory book published in 1446 describes combining an initial consonant, a vowel, and sometimes a final consonant into a syllable block.

Korean writing also mixed Hangul with Hanja, Chinese characters used to write Korean. North Korea abolished Hanja in 1949; mixed Hangul-Hanja writing remained conventional in South Korea through the 1980s. Hangul-only newspaper writing returned in 1988, and Hangul-only writing became the norm during the 1990s. These shifts affected the surrounding text, not how 헒 is assembled.

Why can 헒 appear as separate jamo?

The same syllable can appear as one block or separate letters.

Hangul's component letters are called jamo. Typefaces vary their size and spacing inside a square cell, so 헒 may look tighter or more open. Unicode also defines the equivalent sequence 헒, written as separate linked jamo. Some software exposes that sequence instead of the single block 헒. Text normalization—the standardization of equivalent text—can combine or separate the same components.