The shape of 김치

You order kimchi without thinking about it. By the end of today you will be able to write it — 김치 — and read it off a menu.

That is the whole method of this course: you already know the sounds. All that is missing is the writing, and Korean writing was designed in 1443 to be learned in a morning.

English writes letters in a line: k-i-m-c-h-i. Korean stacks the letters of one syllable into one square block.

So 김치 is not six letters. It is two syllables, each drawn in its own square: