Hangul stroke order
Pick a letter to watch it written, then trace it. The same few rules cover all 40 letters, and the counts below come from our own stroke drawings.
Watch and trace
Without JavaScript the animation shows ㄱ; every letter's frames are on the Korean alphabet page.
The rules
- Top to bottom. Strokes higher up come first: in ㅎ the short top stroke, then the line, then the circle.
- Left to right. Of two strokes side by side, the left one comes first: the left upright of ㅂ before the right one.
- Lines run left to right and top to bottom. Horizontal strokes are drawn rightwards and vertical ones downwards; only the circle and the sweeping diagonals curve back.
- The circle is one stroke. ㅇ and the circle of ㅎ start at the top and go round counterclockwise, closing where they began.
- Compound vowels are their parts in order. ㅘ is ㅗ then ㅏ; ㅢ is ㅡ then ㅣ.
In our drawings 31 of the 40 letters begin with a straight line, 12 need four strokes or more, and ㅇ and ㅎ contain a circle.
Practice
Print rows of any letter or of whole words from the hangul practice sheets, or test yourself on the hangul quiz. Names and sounds are on the Korean alphabet chart.