The Korean Wikipedia () is the

Korean language Korean (South Korean: , ''hangugeo''; North Korean: , ''chosŏnmal'') is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea (geographica ...

edition of Wikipedia. It was founded on 11 October 2002 and reached ten thousand articles on 4 June 2005. As of , it has articles with active users and is the largest Wikipedia.

History

The Korean Wikipedia initially used an older version of

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for Media ...

. The software had problems representing

Hangul The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The l ...

, which limited usage. In August 2002, the software was upgraded and started to support non-English scripts such as

. However,

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...

continued to have an encoding problem, which kept contributions to the encyclopedia low. Nevertheless, from October 2002 to July 2003, the number of articles increased from 13 to 159, and in August 2003 it reached 348. Finally, in September 2003 the hangul problem was solved. From September 2003, with no accessing difficulty once the encoding error in IE was solved, the number of contributions and visits increased. The Korean Wikipedia's prospects became even more optimistic following the momentum created by substantial coverage in the Korean media. The Korean Wikipedia won the Information Trust Award in the general Internet culture branch in 2005.

Statistics

Hangul and Hanja

The Korean Wikipedia is written almost entirely in hangul.

Hanja Hanja (Hangul: ; Hanja: , ), alternatively known as Hancha, are Chinese characters () used in the writing of Korean. Hanja was used as early as the Gojoseon period, the first ever Korean kingdom. (, ) refers to Sino-Korean vocabulary, ...

is only used in order to clarify certain phrases, and is usually parenthesized. There is a group, named Dajimo, that worked to introduce a mixed script system to the Korean Wikipedia. A request for a separate Wikipedia in mixed script, however, was rejected.

Dialects

There are two major standards in the Korean language, the South Korea standard, and the North Korea standard. North Koreans are underrepresented on the Korean Wikipedia, due to North Korean censorship of the

Internet in North Korea Internet access is available in North Korea, but is only permitted with special authorization. It is primarily used for government purposes, and also by foreigners. The country has some broadband infrastructure, including fiber optic links betw ...

. Therefore, most users of the Korean Wikipedia are South Koreans and most articles are written in the South Korean style. The official name of the Wikipedia is . ''Hangugeo'' is the name for the

in South Korea, and ''baekgwa'' is a clipped form of "encyclopedia".

Services derived from Korean Wikipedia

Businesses heavily make use of the Korean Wikipedia in various ways, for its license, the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Attribution Share-Alike License (CC BY-SA), allows modification and distribution for commercial purpose.

Empas Empas (hangul: 엠파스) was one of the popular total internet search tools and web portal sites in South Korea. The service was launched in 1998 by Knowledge Plant Corporation (), which changed its name to Empas Corporation in 2004. The name '' ...

integrated the Korean Wikipedia database in its search since 11 August 2005. The feature to search Korean Wikipedia using a mobile phone with a wireless Internet connection through Nate was available to the subscribers of

SK Telecom SK Telecom Co., Ltd. ( or ) is a South Korean wireless telecommunications operator and former film distributor and is part of the SK Group, one of the country's largest chaebols. It leads the local market with 50.5 percent share as of 2008. ...

from 6 July 2007. Since 21 August, Daum mirrored Korean Wikipedia and

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...

on its portal, and

Naver Naver (Hangul: 네이버) is a South Korean online platform operated by the Naver Corporation. It was launched in 1999 as the first web portal in South Korea to develop and use its own search engine. It was also the world's first operator to ...

also started to present the search results from the Korean and English Wikipedia prior to others from 11 January 2008.

Politics

The South Korean right-wing youth group story K favors proactive involvement in contributing to Korean Wikipedia.北 편들고 南 깎아내리는 위키피디아 (Korean Wikipedia that favors North Korea; does not favor South Korea)
16 July 2011 Donga Ilbo Human rights groups have sent copies of the Korean Wikipedia to

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

on USB sticks by balloon.

Gallery

Wikipedia-logo-ko-30000.jpg, Korean Wikipedia's 30,000 article logo (14 December 2006) Wikipedia-logo-ko-40000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 40,000 article logo (2 August 2007) Wikipedia-logo-ko-50000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 50,000 article logo (4 January 2008) Wikipedia-logo-ko-60000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 60,000 article logo (24 April 2008) Wikipedia-logo-ko-70000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 70,000 article logo (7 August 2008) 80000wikipedia ko.png, Korean Wikipedia's 80,000 article logo (20 November 2008) Wikipedia-logo-ko-100000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 100,000 article logo (4 June 2009) Wikipedia-logo-ko-150000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 150,000 article logo (15 December 2010) Wikipedia-logo-ko-200000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 200,000 article logo (19 May 2012) Wikipedia-logo-ko-250000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 250,000 article logo (3 October 2013) Wikipedia-logo-ko-300000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 300,000 article logo (5 January 2015) Wikipedia-logo-ko-400000-02.png, Korean Wikipedia's 400,000 article logo (22 October 2017) Wikipedia-logo-ko-500000.png, Korean Wikipedia's 500,000 article logo (15 June 2020) Wikipedia-logo-ko-600k.svg, Korean Wikipedia's 600,000 article logo (16 August 2022)

Notes

External links

*
Korean Wikipedia mobile version
{{Wikipedias Wikipedias by language Korean-language websites Internet properties established in 2002 2002 establishments in South Korea