Joiners, selectors and fillers
HANGUL JAMO FILLERS (U+115F–U+1160)
Two zero-width fillers that stand in for a missing initial consonant or medial vowel when a Korean syllable block is written out in jamo.
- Range
U+115F–U+1160- Category
- Joiners, selectors and fillers
- Removed by default
- When free-floating
- Governing option
- Aggressive
-a - Can be load-bearing
- Yes
Where it comes from
Korean text encoded as conjoining jamo rather than as precomposed syllables — linguistic material, some IMEs, and older data.
Why it matters
They are invisible and they sit inside words, so they break search and comparison for Korean exactly the way a zero width space does for English.
Before and after
A jamo filler surrounded by Latin letters: there is no syllable block for it to complete.
The character is shown as a labelled chip so you can see where it sits. In your text it draws nothing at all.
When it is legitimate
Inside a jamo sequence, next to other Hangul jamo.
How to remove it
Removed by the default pass unless the previous kept character is a Hangul jamo; `-a` removes them there as well.
Is it an AI watermark?
Not a watermark
No. These are Korean script mechanics. U+3164 HANGUL FILLER — the one behind blank usernames — is a different, compatibility character that is always removed.
No connection to machine-generated text. It comes from software, from a keyboard, or from a person.
Questions
How do these differ from U+3164?
U+115F and U+1160 are conjoining jamo used inside a syllable block and are kept next to other jamo. U+3164 is a compatibility character with no such role and is always removed.
Will Korean text survive?
Precomposed Korean is untouched. Jamo sequences keep their fillers under the default settings.
Check your own text
Paste anything into the cleaner to see every hidden character it contains, with position, codepoint and what happens to each one. Nothing is uploaded.