The Korean Wikipedia () is the

Korean language Korean is the first language, native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Koreans, Korean descent. It is the national language of both South Korea and North Korea. In the south, the language is known as () and in the north, it is kn ...

edition of Wikipedia. It was founded on 11 October 2002. As of , it is the 2nd largest Korean language Wiki site and the largest Wikipedia, with articles and active users.

History

The Korean Wikipedia initially used an older version of

MediaWiki MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-August/000382.html, Magnus Manske's announc ...

. The software had problems representing

Hangul The Korean alphabet is the modern writing system for the Korean language. In North Korea, the alphabet is known as (), and in South Korea, it is known as (). The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs ...

, 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 as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

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. It reached ten thousand articles on 4 June 2005. The Korean Wikipedia won the Information Trust Award in the general Internet culture branch in 2005. On April 16, 2011, discussions were held to promote the formation of a group to support Wikimedia projects in South Korea. Subsequently, on March 10, 2012, the Wikimedia Korea Chapter Preparation Committee was established. A founding general meeting was held on October 19, 2014, and finally, on November 4, 2015, the non-profit corporation Korea Wikimedia Association was officially established and has been active since then. In 2019, it was approved by the Wikimedia Foundation in the United States as a recognized chapter in South Korea.

Statistics

Comparisons to other Korean wikis and information services

Korean Wikipedia is the 2nd largest Korean language wiki, and the 33th most visited website of 2024 according to Similarweb. It is behind

Namuwiki Namuwiki (, ) is a Korean-language wiki based in Paraguay. The website was launched on 17 April 2015 and is powered by the proprietary wiki software The Seed. As of 5 October 2024, Namuwiki has a total of 6,679,813 normal articles (, ), includin ...

, in terms of both traffic (Namuwiki is fifth, compared to Korean Wikipedia's thirty third) and article count (including redirects), where Namuwiki (6,525,085 articles) has almost double (1.98 times) the articles of Korean Wikipedia (3,290,720), as of October 5th, 2024. According to ''

The Hankyoreh ''The Hankyoreh'' () is a centre-left liberal daily newspaper in South Korea. It was established in 1988 after widespread purges forced out dissident journalists, and was envisioned as an alternative to existing newspapers, which were regarde ...

'', Namuwiki has 7.2 times more traffic compared to the Korean Wikipedia as of October 2024. It is generally attributed that Korean Wikipedia is less substantive and influential compared to NamuWiki. Jimmy Wales stated that, in other countries, models like Wikipedia were first introduced during the early stages of the internet, leading to very enthusiastic responses. In contrast, in South Korea, other collective collaboration services such as

Naver Naver (; stylized as NAVER) is a South Korean online platform operated by the Naver Corporation. The company's products include a search engine, email hosting, blogs, maps, and mobile payment. History Naver was the first Korean web provide ...

's Jisik-in (지식인), a

Quora Quora is an American social question-and-answer website and online knowledge market headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can post questions, answ ...

style ask-and-answer website, were already available, leading to much more lackluster responses.

Hangul and Hanja

The Korean Wikipedia is written almost entirely in hangul.

Hanja Hanja (; ), alternatively spelled Hancha, are Chinese characters used to write the Korean language. After characters were introduced to Korea to write Literary Chinese, they were adapted to write Korean as early as the Gojoseon period. () ...

is only used in order to clarify certain phrases, and is usually parenthesized. A group named Dajimo 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

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...

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 by foreigners. The country has some broadband infrastructure, including fiber optic links between m ...

. 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 since 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 purposes. The web portal

Empas Empas () was a South Korean internet search engine and web portal. Name The service was launched in 1998 by Knowledge Plant Corporation (), which changed its name to Empas Corporation in 2004. The name ''Empas'' is a combination of ''e-media' ...

integrated the Korean Wikipedia database in its search tool since 11 August 2005. The feature to search Korean Wikipedia using a mobile phone with a wireless Internet connection through the web portal

Nate Nate or NATE may refer to: People and fictional characters *Nate (given name) *A nickname for Nathanael *A nickname for Nathaniel Organizations *National Association for the Teaching of English, the UK subject teacher association for all aspects ...

was available to the subscribers of

SK Telecom SK Telecom Co., Ltd., abbreviated as SKT ( 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 perce ...

from 6 July 2007. Since 21 August,

Daum Daum may refer to: People * Ahron Daum (1951–2018), Israeli-born Modern-Orthodox rabbi, educator, and author *Andreas Daum (active from 1995), German-American historian * Auguste Daum (1853–1909), French ceramist *Christoph Daum (1953–2024), ...

mirrored Korean Wikipedia and

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition. English Wikipedia is hosted alongside o ...

on its portal, and

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 Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

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