한글 기초

Hangul (한글) was created in 1443 by King Sejong so that ordinary people — not just scholars — could learn to read in days, not years. It is not a random set of shapes: consonants are drawn from the shape your mouth makes to say them, and vowels are built from three simple strokes (a dot for the sun/sky, a flat line for the earth, a vertical line for a standing person).

The result is one of the most logical writing systems in the world. By the end of this pack you will be able to sound out any Korean word, even ones you have never seen before.

Korean has 14 basic consonants (자음, jaeum). Each has a traditional name (its own way of saying "this letter"), which you'll sometimes hear in classrooms or dictionaries — but you don't need to memorize the names to use the letters.

Notice a pattern: ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ (plain) sound softer than ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅊ (aspirated — extra puff of air). ㅅ has its own tense partner (ㅆ) you'll meet in a later section, and ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅇ, ㄹ are the "smooth" sounds — no air, no tension. For now, just get comfortable saying the plain sounds above out loud.

Korean has 10 basic vowels (모음, moeum), built from three strokes: a dot (sky), a flat line (earth), and a standing line (person). Combine them and you get every basic vowel shape below.

Every Korean syllable is written as one block: consonant + vowel (and sometimes a final consonant, covered later). Where the vowel goes depends on its shape:

• "Tall" vowels (ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅣ) are written to the right of the consonant.
• "Wide" vowels (ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ) are written below the consonant.

That's the entire rule — once you know it, you can build (and read) any syllable.

Double consonants (쌍자음, ssangjaeum) are five plain consonants doubled up. They sound tighter and more tense — no puff of air, throat pulled in slightly. Compare each pair below.

Compound vowels (이중모음, ijungmoeum) combine two vowel sounds into one syllable — think of them as the diphthongs of Korean.

A syllable can end in a consonant — this is called batchim (받침, literally "support"). No matter which of the 14 consonants sits in that final spot, it collapses into one of just 7 representative sounds when pronounced. Learn these 7, and you can read the ending of any Korean syllable.

Time to put it all together. These 20 words mix every letter type you've learned — plain and tense consonants, basic and compound vowels, and every batchim sound. Read them one at a time; don't worry about memorizing the meaning yet, just focus on sounding each one out.