How it works
Korean emoticons are built from Hangul letters: two letters for eyes and one between them, as in ㅇㅅㅇ, or a row of one letter that stands for a sound, as in ㅋㅋ for laughing. Tap one to copy it.
Read the full guide
Which letters make the face
Wikipedia's article on emoticons records that ㅅ, ㅁ or ㅂ can be the mouth or nose and ㅇ, ㅎ or ㅍ the eyes, and that ㅜ and ㅠ can draw a crying face, as T does in Western style. Quotation marks, apostrophes and carets are common too, and a semicolon can mean sweating.
Rows that stand for a sound
ㅋㅋ and ㅎㅎ are both laughter. Wiktionary notes that a single ㅋ is usually dismissive, and that the more often the letter is repeated, the more real the laugh. A row of ㅜ or ㅠ is a crying face.
- Labels use Unicode's letter names, such as sios for ㅅ. A device with no Korean font shows empty boxes.
- ㅠㅠ and tears inside parentheses, such as (ㅠ_ㅠ), are on crying kaomoji.
Questions and answers
What does ㅋㅋ mean in Korean?
Laughter, like haha or lol. The English and the Korean Wiktionary both record a row of ㅋ as internet slang for the sound of laughing.
What do ㅜㅜ and ㅠㅠ mean?
A crying face, like T_T. The English and the Korean Wiktionary both record ㅠㅠ as an emoticon for crying. The English one lists ㅜㅜ, ㅠ.ㅠ and ㅠㅅㅠ as other forms of it, and all three are tiles here.
How do you type Korean emoticons?
Copy one here: no US keyboard has the Hangul letters. In the group A Hangul mouth between keyboard eyes only the middle letter is Korean, so ^ㅅ^ is two typed carets around one copied letter.