Unicode Demystified

Hangul

Hangul is the name of the Korean writing system. Some linguists consider it the most perfect writing system in common use. Invented in the fifteenth century by King Sejong, it's basically an alphabetic system, but the letters, called jamo, are arranged into blocks representing whole syllables, probably because of the influence of the Chinese characters. Hangul syllables look somewhat like Chinese characters and are laid out on the page in a similar fashion (in fact, Korean writing often uses Chinese characters in addition to Hangul syllables).

Hangul jamo are classified into three categories, reflecting the structure of Korean pronunciation: choseong, which are initial consonants; jungseong, which are vowels; and jongseong, which are trailing ...