The King and his committee of scholars designed the alphabet to be simple enough for any 'layman' person of the day to be able to read and write their own language. Chinese was still the dominate means of published writings until the 1950's. After the Korean War, a nationalistic movement brought forth changes which included that billboards, shop windows, and office directories in public buildings be written in Hangul. Korean is read from left to right and up to down. Korean is then read by syllables, which are grouped into words.
Syllables always start with a consonant.
Starting out is a little difficult, but with a little practice Hangul is much easier to read than the romanization of Korean words. Korean words rarely consist of more than 2 or 3 simple syllables, unlike the English language. To the right is a chart of all of the 'normal' consonants found in Hangul. These sounds are fairly easy to obtain. The program, 'Reading Korean', demonstrates each sound of the above consonants.