The Korean writing system that is commonly classified as a featural alphabet is Hangul.
Hangul was created under King Sejong the Great during the Joseon dynasty. The project was completed around 1443–1444 and formally presented in 1446 in a document called Hunminjeongeum, meaning “The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People.” It was designed to make reading and writing Korean more accessible than Literary Chinese and Hanja.
Hangul is called featural because the shapes of several consonant letters reflect features of their pronunciation, such as the position of the speech organs. Vowel symbols also follow a systematic design based on traditional philosophical ideas. Scholars debate how fully Hangul meets the strictest definition of a featural script, but it is the standard example given in linguistics and writing-system studies.
The letters, called jamo, are not written in a simple horizontal string. They are grouped into compact syllable blocks, which makes Hangul look partly alphabetic and partly syllabic. Hanja may still appear in specialist or historical contexts, but Hangul is Korea’s dominant script.