Appendix C. Implementing Korean Jamos

Because many people are not acquainted with the features of Korean text, it is worth discussing some of the characteristics of the two different coding methods: decomposed jamos versus precomposed syllables.

Modern Hangul syllable blocks can be expressed with either two or three jamos, either in the form consonant + vowel or the form consonant + vowel + consonant. There are 19 possible leading (initial) consonants, 21 vowels, and 28 trailing (final) consonants. This results in 399 possible two-jamo syllable blocks and 10,773 possible three-jamo syllable blocks, for a total of 11,172 modern Hangul syllable blocks.