Korean Surnames in Numbers

10,689,959 of the 49,705,663 Korean nationals counted in the 2015 census, the most recent census to record surnames. That is more than one person in five.

Lee (이) is second with 7,306,828 people (14.7%) and Park (박) third with 4,192,074 (8.4%). Together the three surnames cover 22.2 million people.

Kim, Lee, Park, Choi (최), Jung (정), Kang (강), Cho (조), Yoon (윤), Jang (장) and Lim (임). The 30 most common surnames cover 86.1% of the population.

Kim, Lee, Park, Choi (2.33 million), Jung (2.15 million), Kang (1.18 million), Cho (1.06 million) and Yoon (1.02 million). Jang is just short, with 992,721.

Together they account for 99.8% of the population.

People with the same surname are divided into clans, each named after its place of origin, the bon-gwan (본관). The Gimhae Kim clan alone is 9.0% of the population.

Gimhae Kim, Miryang Park (밀양 박씨, 3.10 million), Jeonju Lee (전주 이씨, 2.63 million), Gyeongju Kim (경주 김씨, 1.80 million) and Gyeongju Lee (경주 이씨, 1.39 million).

Gimhae (4.46 million), Gyeongju (1.80 million) and Gwangsan (광산, 0.93 million).

Together they include 97.8% of the population.

Almost all Korean surnames are a single syllable. The next largest two-syllable surnames are Hwangbo (황보) with 10,383 people and Jegal (제갈) with 5,655.