Koreanic · ISO 639-3 kor · ko
Korean Language 한국어
Korean is a Koreanic language spoken by about 77 million people in 7 countries. It is an official language of South Korea and North Korea. It is written in the Hangul script.
Where Korean is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Korean
Language family
- Koreanic
- Korean
Writing system
Hangul script
About the Korean language
Korean (한국어) is spoken by about 77 million people, which makes it the 27th most spoken language in the world — just behind Egyptian Arabic (78 million) and ahead of Filipino (66 million). It belongs to the Koreanic language family.
Where is Korean spoken?
Korean is used in 7 countries. The largest communities live in South Korea (52 million), North Korea (23 million), China (2.1 million), United States (1.0 million) and Japan (640,650). More than half of the population speaks it in South Korea and North Korea — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Korean: South Korea 100% (52 million), North Korea 88% (23 million), China 0.2% (2.1 million), United States 0.3% (1.0 million), Japan 0.5% (640,650) and Canada 0.6% (217,250).
Korean is an official language in 2 countries: South Korea and North Korea. It also has regional official status in China.
Writing system and status
Korean is written in the Hangul script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 ko, ISO 639-3 kor.
Frequently asked questions about Korean
How many people speak Korean?
Where is Korean spoken?
In which countries is Korean an official language?
What language family does Korean belong to?
What is Korean called in Korean?
Is Korean an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.