韓
부수: 韋
획수: 18획
韓 simply means Korea and is used for the surname 한.
韓 = 龺 + 韋
X = phonetic + semantic
• 龺 is an abbreviation of 倝 (meaning ‘sunrise/dawn’) and is used for its sound.
• 韋 depicts ‘feet 止 surrounding a city wall’ (see image below). Originally it meant ‘a wooden fence around a well’.
Note the components of 韓 are largely irrelevant because this character is used with proper nouns and was adopted for transliteration of the sound ‘han’.
Evolution:
韓 = wooden fence around a well ➔ borrowed use ➔ Korea
韋 = 
+ 囗
• 
depicts feet, one upright and the other inverted.
• 囗 depicts a city border and represents the meaning ‘city wall’.
Mnemonic
Since 韓 is used as a proper noun and was adopted for transliteration rather than meaning, brute force memorisation is recommended.
Alternatively, think of how 龺 is an abbreviation of 倝, meaning: sunrise; bright; clear. The connection between 龺 and 朝鮮(조선) is uncanny when you think about how Korea is poetically known as ‘The Land of the Morning Calm’. As for 韋 ‘feet surrounding a city wall’, think of how Korea needed to defend itself from surrounding kingdoms throughout its history.
Vocabulary
| 韓國 | 한국 | Korea |
| 韓國語 | 한국어 | Korean language |
| 韓國的 | 한국적 | Korean style |
| 韓食 | 한식 | Korean food |
| 韓服 | 한복 | Korean traditional clothing |
| 韓人 | 한인 | a Korean person |
| 韓半島 | 한반도 | the Korean peninsula |
| 韓中 | 한중 | Korea-China |
| 韓英辭典 | 한영사전 | a Korean-English dictionary |
| 北韓 | 북한 | North Korea |
| 大韓民國 | 대한민국 | Republic of Korea |
| 駐韓 | 주한 | stationed/residing in Korea |
Additional notes
‘Han’ is a native Korean root for ‘leader’ or ‘great’ and has been suggested to be related to the Mongolian ‘khan’ (high, boss). Overly nationalistic scholars further trace the root back to Sumerian, though this is questionable.
Other resources
Image searches
Google
Bing
Yahoo Japan
Baidu (click 图片)
Sogou
Pinterest
Flickr
CJKV
CJKV Dict
Wikitionary
Unihan Database
Korean
Chinese
Written Chinese
Arch Chinese
ZDic
CC-Canto
Chinese Text Project
The Chinese University of Hong Kong (etymology)
Chinese Boost
Japanese
Takoboto
Jisho
JLearn.net
Sakura
The Kanji Map
Sentence Search
Immersion Kit
Vietnamese
Bibliography
Affiliate links help support uK.
— Daum 사전, [s.v. 韓].
— Grant, B.K. (1982). A Guide To Korean Characters: Reading and Writing Hangul and Hanja, [s.v. 1678]. Seoul: Hollym.
— Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters, [s.v. 韓, 龺, 韋, 止, 囗].
— Seely, C., Henshall, K.G., & Fan, J. (2016). The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji: Remembering and Understanding the 2,136 Standard Japanese Characters, [s.v. 1164]. Singapore: Tuttle Publishing.
— Son, C. (2000). Haan of Minjung Theology and Han of Han Philosophy: In the Paradigm of Process Philosophy and Metaphysics of Relatedness. Lanham: University Press of America.