Hangul Syllable Jjweol

It is one Korean syllable; its meaning in a word depends on context. The Hangul jamo are letter pieces: initial consonant ㅉ, vowel ㅝ, and final consonant ㄹ. They combine into one spoken syllable inside a word, whose full meaning comes from the surrounding syllables.

How do I type 쭬?

Enter ㅉ, then ㅝ, then ㄹ in a Korean IME. The input method composes the parts into the single precomposed syllable block.

Unicode's canonical decomposition is ᄍ + ᅯ + ᆯ. Text normalization, a processing step that combines equivalent character sequences, can recompose it as 쭬. The compatibility jamo ㅉ ㅝ ㄹ are separate spacing characters, so entering those three does not by itself create the same precomposed character.

Why does Hangul use syllable blocks?

They group a syllable's letter parts into one compact unit.

Hangul was devised to write Korean speech, at a time when Korean writing relied largely on Chinese characters. The first record of its creation dates to 1443 and names the alphabet Hunminjeongeum. The 1446 guide of that name explains its letter sounds and how initial, middle, and final parts combine in a syllable.

Records place the name Hangul in use by the early 1910s; earlier names for the script included Jeongeum and Eonmun. South Korea calls it Hangul, while North Korea calls the same script Chosŏn'gŭl.