How does morphophonemic spelling work in the Korean language?

In the Korean language, spelling is primarily morphophonemic rather than phonemic. This means that individual morphemes—the smallest units of meaning—are written in a constant, standardized form, even if their actual pronunciation changes depending on the surrounding sounds or when they are combined with other elements.1

By maintaining a consistent visual representation for a word's base form, the writing system helps readers identify the underlying meaning of a word regardless of its phonetic shifts in speech.1

For example, the word for "price" is consistently spelled as kaps, even though its pronunciation fluctuates based on context:
* In isolation, it is pronounced /kap/.1
* When followed by certain particles, such as in the phrase kaps-man ("just the price"), it is pronounced /kam/.1

This approach allows the Hangul script to prioritize the preservation of lexical identity over a strictly phonetic transcription of every sound change.1