Hangul Syllables

Short description: Unicode character block

Hangul Syllables
Range	U+AC00..U+D7AF (11,184 code points)
Plane	BMP
Scripts	Hangul
Major alphabets	Hangul
Assigned	11,172 code points
Unused	12 reserved code points
Source standards	KS C 5601-1992
Unicode version history
2.0	11,172 (+11,172)
Note: 6,656 characters were present at U+3400..U+4DFF in Unicode 1.1, but were moved to their current locations with Unicode version 2.0, along with 4,516 additional characters.

Hangul Syllables is a Unicode block containing precomposed Hangul syllable blocks for modern Korean. The syllables can be directly mapped by algorithm to sequences of two or three characters in the Hangul Jamo Unicode block:

• one of U+1100–U+1112: the 19 modern Hangul leading consonant jamos;
• one of U+1161–U+1175: the 21 modern Hangul vowel jamos;
• none, or one of U+11A8–U+11C2: the 27 modern Hangul trailing consonant jamos.

This block is encoded according to the canonically equivalent order of these (two or three) jamos (one in each subrange of jamos above) composing each syllable.

Note that a full Hangul syllable may include one of these characters but may be preceded by one or more leading consonant jamos, and followed by one or more trailing jamos (possibly preceded by one or more vowel jamos if the encoded syllable is composed by two jamos does not include any trailing consonant jamos). As well some Hangul syllables may not include any one of these precomposed character. But such extension of the Hangul script (which allows creating more complex syllables composed in the same square) is not very common in modern Korean.

History

Encoding hangul syllables in Unicode was complicated by a reorganization of the code points:

• Unicode version 1.0.0 encoded 2,350 modern Korean hangul syllables from KS C 5601-1987 at U+3400–U+3D2D. This range is now part of CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A.
• Version 1.1 added 1,930 additional modern syllables from KS C 5657-1991 at U+3D2E–U+44B7, six modern syllables from GB 12052-89 at U+44B8–U+44BD, and the first 2,370 syllables that are not in the aforementioned three sets at U+44BE–U+4DFF. These collectively cover the remainder of what is now CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A and all of what is now Yijing Hexagram Symbols.
  • In addition, there were three errors in Unicode 1.1:
    • U+384E: 삤 in the Unicode Character Database, but 삣 in the Unicode 1.0 and ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993 code charts and per the source standard mappings
    • U+40BC: 삣 in the Unicode Character Database, but 삤 in the ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993 code charts and per the source standard mappings
    • U+436C: 콫 in the Unicode Character Database, but 콪 in the ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993 code charts and per the source standard mappings
• Version 2.0 added the 4,516 remaining possible syllables from KS C 5601-1992 and rearranged all of the encoded syllables into the current U+AC00–U+D7AF range which allows algorithmic decomposition into individual jamo.

RFC 2279 explains that this significant incompatible change was made on the assumption that no data or software using Unicode for Korean existed:

"The official justification for allowing such an incompatible change was that no implementations and no data containing Hangul existed, a statement that is likely to be true but remains unprovable. The incident has been dubbed the "Korean mess", and the relevant committees have pledged to never, ever again make such an incompatible change." — RFC 2279

Subsequently, Unicode adopted an encoding stability policy which states that "Once a character is encoded, it will not be moved or removed".

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Hangul Syllables block:

Version	Final code points	Count	UTC ID	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
2.0	U+AC00..D7A3	11,172			N767	Ksar, Mike (1991-11-25), Unconfirmed minutes WG2-Paris meeting of October 1991
				X3L2/93-078	N848	Modified Korean Position, 1992-07-02
			UTC/1994-xxx			Unicode Technical Committee Meeting #62: Discussion of Korean Hangul Proposal, 1994-09-30
				X3L2/95-031	N1158	Korean National Position for adding Hangul characters, 1995-03-08
					N1170	Canadian Position on Korean Proposal in N 1158 for adding Hangul characters, 1995-03-10
			UTC/1995-021B			Aliprand, Joan (1995-03-10), Closed Caucus Minutes, UTC #64
					N1198	Working Draft for a pDAM to 10646 on Korean Hangul, 1995-04-05
				X3L2/95-053.1	N1199	Background on Korean Coding, 1995-04-30
					N1203	Umamaheswaran, V. S.; Ksar, Mike (1995-05-03), Unconfirmed minutes of SC2/WG2 Meeting 27, Geneva
				X3L2/95-053	N1209	PDAM no. 5 to ISO/IEC 10646-1: Hangul Character Collections, 1995-05-09
			UTC/1995-xxx			Unicode Technical Committee Meeting #65, Minutes, 1995-06-02
				X3L2/95-090	N1253 (doc, txt)	Umamaheswaran, V. S.; Ksar, Mike (1995-09-09), Unconfirmed Minutes of WG 2 Meeting # 28 in Helsinki, Finland; 1995-06-26--27
					N1285	Hangul Syllable Character Name Generation Algorithm, 1995-11-08
					N1303 (html, doc)	Umamaheswaran, V. S.; Ksar, Mike (1996-01-26), Minutes of Meeting 29, Tokyo
					N1331	Paterson, Bruce (1996-03-14), DAM 5 (Korean Hangul) Submittal to JTC1
					N1332	Paterson, Bruce (1996-03-14), BMP Revised Layout (DAM 5 diagram attachment)
					N1391	Paterson, Bruce (1996-05-18), Hangul syllable name algorithm, simplified
					N1353	Umamaheswaran, V. S.; Ksar, Mike (1996-06-25), Draft minutes of WG2 Copenhagen Meeting # 30
					N1537	Table of Replies and Feedback on Amendment 5 – Hangul, 1997-01-29
				L2/97-125	N1561	Paterson, Bruce (1997-05-27), Draft Report on JTC1 letter ballot on DAM No. 5 to ISO/IEC 10646-1 (Hangul)
					N1570	Paterson, Bruce (1997-06-23), Almost Final Text (pages 2-5 and 182 only) of DAM 5 – Hangul
				L2/97-288	N1603	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1997-10-24), Unconfirmed Meeting Minutes, WG 2 Meeting # 33, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 20 June – 4 July 1997
					N1806 (pdf, doc)	Kim, Kyongsok; Paterson, Bruce (1998-07-08), Defect Report on AMD 5 - Hangul Syllables with Editor's response
				L2/99-022	N1942	Paterson, Bruce (1998-12-08), Hangul syllable name rules, proposed for ISO/IEC 10646 2nd Edition
				L2/99-010	N1903 (pdf, html, doc)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1998-12-30), Minutes of WG 2 meeting 35, London, U.K.; 1998-09-21--25
				L2/99-114	N2018	Paterson, Bruce (1999-03-31), Draft Technical Technical Corrigendum No. 3 to ISO/IEC 10646-1: 1993
				L2/99-232	N2003	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1999-08-03), Minutes of WG 2 meeting 36, Fukuoka, Japan, 1999-03-09--15
				L2/99-297	N2119	Disposition of Comments Report on SC 2 N 3306, Draft Technical Corrigendum No. 3 to ISO/IEC 10646-1: 1993, 1999-09-20
				L2/99-298	N2120	Paterson, Bruce (1999-09-21), Final Text for Technical Corrigendum No. 3 to ISO/IEC 10646-1: 1993
				L2/03-100		Edberg, Peter (2002-11-05), Hangul Mapping Errors
				L2/02-463	N2564	Kim, Kyongsok (2002-11-30), 3-way cross-reference tables - KS X 1001, KPS 9566, and UCS
				L2/04-361		Moore, Lisa (2004-11-23), UTC #101 Minutes
				L2/17-080		Chung, Jaemin (2017-03-29), Informative document about three pre-Unicode-2.0 modern hangul syllables