Korean Alphabet (Hangul) Reference
All 24 basic Hangul letters — 14 consonants and 10 vowels — with names, Revised Romanization, and sounds.
Click any letter to copy it.
Beyond these 24 basic letters, Hangul also has 5 tense (double) consonants — ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ — and 11 complex vowels such as ㅐ (ae), ㅔ (e), and ㅢ (ui).
Hangul is the Korean alphabet. It has 24 basic letters — 14 consonants and 10 vowels — which combine into square syllable blocks rather than a straight line. So 한 is built from ㅎ (h) + ㅏ (a) + ㄴ (n), read “han”. Learn the 24 jamo and you can sound out any Korean word.
What is Hangul?
Hangul (한글) is the writing system for the Korean language. Unlike Chinese characters, it is a true alphabet: each letter, called a jamo, stands for a single consonant or vowel sound. There are 14 basic consonants and 10 basic vowels — 24 letters in all — plus tense consonants and complex vowels built from those basics.
How syllable blocks work
Korean does not write letters in one long row. Instead the jamo stack into square syllable blocks, each block one spoken syllable. A block starts with an initial consonant, adds a vowel to the right or below, and can end with a final consonant (the batchim). For example, 한 combines ㅎ + ㅏ + ㄴ into a single block read “han”, and 글 combines ㄱ + ㅡ + ㄹ to read “geul”.
A script that was designed
Most alphabets grew slowly over centuries, but Hangul was deliberately created in 1443 under King Sejong the Great and promulgated in 1446. It is a featural script: the consonant shapes are modelled on the position of the mouth and tongue when the sound is made, and related sounds share related shapes (ㄱ→ㅋ, ㄷ→ㅌ). This design is a big reason Hangul is often called quick to learn.
A first look at Hangul letters
A representative subset — search and copy the full set of 24 in the tool above.
| Letter | Type | Romanization | Sound |
|---|---|---|---|
| ㄱ | Consonant | g / k | g as in “go” |
| ㄴ | Consonant | n | n as in “net” |
| ㅁ | Consonant | m | m as in “map” |
| ㅅ | Consonant | s | s as in “sun” |
| ㅇ | Consonant | ng / silent | silent at start; ng at end |
| ㅎ | Consonant | h | h as in “hat” |
| ㅏ | Vowel | a | a as in “father” |
| ㅓ | Vowel | eo | eo as in “sun” |
| ㅗ | Vowel | o | o as in “more” |
| ㅜ | Vowel | u | oo as in “boot” |
| ㅡ | Vowel | eu | a tight “uh” |
| ㅣ | Vowel | i | ee as in “see” |
Romanization is a guide, not a rule
The spellings above use Revised Romanization, the official South Korean system. It maps ㅓ to “eo” and ㅡ to “eu”, which is why Korean names look the way they do in English. Some consonants show two forms (ㄱ = g / k) because the same letter is pronounced softly at the start of a syllable and harder as a final consonant. Treat romanization as a bridge — the real spelling is always the Hangul itself, which you can copy from the tool.
Beyond the 24 basics
Once the basic jamo are familiar, two more groups fill in the gaps: five tense (double) consonants — ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ — and complex vowels such as ㅐ (ae), ㅔ (e), ㅚ (oe), and ㅢ (ui), each built by joining basic vowels. To hear how these sounds map to phonetics, pair this chart with the IPA pronunciation reference, or compare scripts with the Japanese kana chart.