Why can Korean spelling differ from the way a word is pronounced?

Korean spelling often differs from pronunciation because the language is written morphophonemically rather than phonemically. This approach ensures that a given word element maintains a consistent visual form, even when its actual sound changes due to the influence of surrounding elements in a sentence.1

For example, the word for "price" is consistently spelled kaps, but its pronunciation shifts depending on the context: it is pronounced /kap/ when spoken in isolation, but /kam/ when used in the phrase kaps-man ("just the price").1

This system prioritizes the preservation of the underlying structure of words over a direct representation of their phonetic realization. Consequently, while the Hangul script provides symbols for phonemes, the orthographic rules favor maintaining a constant spelling for morphemes, which can lead to discrepancies between how a word is written and how it is spoken.1