Several parts combine into one character.

遠 is a phonetic-semantic compound: 辶 (going / motion) on the outside plus 袁 (yuán, "long flowing robe / robe-tail trailing on the ground") providing both the sound and a subtle hint of meaning. 袁's image of long-trailing fabric reinforces the sense of "extended, drawn-out distance." The composite reads as motion that goes far before it ends — distance that requires sustained travel. 遠 forms an exact semantic pair with 近 (near), and the two characters are nearly always taught and felt together. Mainland simplified to 远.

Korean reading "won." 遠近 (wongeun, far and near / perspective), 遠征 (wonjeong, expedition / military campaign far from home), 永遠 (yeongwon, eternity — "永 long + 遠 far" = forever), 遠隔 (wongyeok, remote / distant — used in 원격수업 "remote class," which became central to Korean pandemic-era education vocabulary), 遠視 (wonsi, "far-sight" = farsightedness), 望遠鏡 (mangwon-gyeong, telescope — "look-far-mirror"). Almost every Korean Sino-Korean word for "far / distant" includes 遠.

Mandarin yuǎn, 3rd tone (simplified 远). 远近 (yuǎnjìn, far and near), 永远 (yǒngyuǎn, forever / eternally — extremely high-frequency in spoken Chinese, used in everything from love declarations to commercial slogans), 远方 (yuǎnfāng, distant land — a poetic word that evokes longing and travel), 远离 (yuǎnlí, to stay far away from). Modern Chinese keeps 远 actively in daily speech.

Japanese on-reading エン (en) — 永遠 (eien, eternity), 遠近 (enkin, perspective in art), 望遠鏡 (bōenkyō, telescope), 遠足 (ensoku, "far-foot" = school excursion / day trip). The alternative on-reading オン (on) survives only in archaic compounds like 久遠 (kuon, "long and far" = vast eternity) used in Buddhist texts. Kun-reading とおい (tōi, far) — 遠い (tōi), 遠く (tōku, far away), 遠ざかる (tōzakaru, to move farther away). Like Korean, Japanese とおい extends naturally to time and relationships: 縁が遠い (en ga tōi, "the connection is far") means "we're distant kin / barely related."

Memory aid: 辶 (motion) plus 袁 (long-flowing robe trailing) — motion that takes long, drawn-out travel = far.