Hangul syllable seu

Enter ㅅ, then ㅡ, with a Korean input method active.

Unicode also represents the same syllable with the decomposed sequence 스. It can look like 스 but contains separate Hangul letters, so a raw text comparison can treat the strings differently.

Normalize both strings before comparing them: NFC composes Hangul where possible, while NFD separates it. Decomposed letters also need font and text-layout support to appear as one block.

What does 스 mean?

It is a Korean syllable sound; the surrounding word supplies its meaning.

Pronounce it with an s sound followed by ㅡ, a Korean vowel with no exact English match; seu is a Latin-letter rendering of the reading, not a translation. In Korean spellings of the English loanwords “service” (서비스) and “style” (스타일), 스 carries the final s in the first and begins the English s+t sequence in the second, which Hangul writes across syllable blocks.

Where did Hangul come from?

Hangul was designed as a systematic way to write Korean sounds.

A court record places its creation in 1443; Hunminjeongeum, the explanatory book for the script, was completed in 1446. The system aimed to make Korean sounds easier to represent and teach, including Korean readings of Chinese characters.

Hangul gained official national-script status in 1894, after public writing had centered on Chinese characters. A proposed but debated link connects it to Phags-pa, a square phonetic script that reached Goryeo; resemblance alone does not establish influence.