Hangul Stroke Order: How to Write the 14 Korean Consonants
Korean letters are not drawn — they are written, in a fixed order, one stroke at a time. Get the order right and your handwriting becomes readable almost immediately. Get it wrong and even correct-looking letters feel off to a Korean reader.
The animation below writes all fourteen basic consonants, from ㄱ to ㅎ, exactly the way they are taught in Korean schools. Each numbered dot marks where a stroke begins. Tap any letter to jump straight to it.
Tap a letter to jump to it · “Slower” halves the writing speed
The five rules of Korean stroke order
Every letter on this page follows the same handful of rules. Once these click, you can work out the stroke order of a letter you have never seen before.
- Top to bottom. A stroke higher on the page is written first — this is why ㄷ starts with its top horizontal line.
- Left to right. Between two strokes at the same height, the left one comes first, as in ㅂ.
- Horizontal before vertical. When strokes cross, the horizontal line is usually written first.
- Outside before inside. Frames are drawn before whatever sits inside them.
- Circles run counter-clockwise from the top. ㅇ and the loop of ㅎ both start at 12 o'clock and travel left. This is the one rule that surprises almost every learner.
One more thing worth knowing early: a Korean letter is never written on its own line like a Latin letter. Consonants and vowels are packed together into square syllable blocks — which is what the word stroke order page covers.
All 14 basic consonants
| Letter | Name | Romanized | Sounds like | Strokes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ㄱ | 기역 | giyeok | g / k | 1 |
| ㄴ | 니은 | nieun | n | 1 |
| ㄷ | 디귿 | digeut | d / t | 2 |
| ㄹ | 리을 | rieul | r / l | 3 |
| ㅁ | 미음 | mieum | m | 3 |
| ㅂ | 비읍 | bieup | b / p | 4 |
| ㅅ | 시옷 | siot | s | 2 |
| ㅇ | 이응 | ieung | silent at the start, ng at the end | 1 |
| ㅈ | 지읒 | jieut | j | 3 |
| ㅊ | 치읓 | chieut | ch | 4 |
| ㅋ | 키읔 | kieuk | k | 2 |
| ㅌ | 티읕 | tieut | t | 3 |
| ㅍ | 피읖 | pieup | p | 4 |
| ㅎ | 히읗 | hieut | h | 3 |
Korean also uses five tense consonants — ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ — but they are simply the letters above written twice, so once you can write ㄱ you can already write ㄲ.
Now write it yourself
Reading stroke order and producing it are different skills. Pick a letter, follow the faint guide underneath, and start at each numbered dot. Use a finger on a phone, a mouse or a stylus on a laptop.
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Keep going
- Vowel stroke order ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ and more — the other half of every syllable.
- Whole words 한글, 안녕, 하늘, 대박 — how letters stack into syllable blocks.
Want to know if your handwriting is actually right?
This page can show you the order. The KorKers app checks your strokes as you write, then takes you from letters to real conversational Korean — slang, culture, and all.