The Korean Wikipedia (Korean한국어 위키백과) is the Korean language edition of Wikipedia. It was founded on 11 October 2002. As of November 2024, it is the 2nd largest Korean language Wiki site[1] and the 23rd largest Wikipedia, with 690,765 articles and 2,150 active users.[2]

Korean Wikipedia
Screenshot
Main Page of the Korean Wikipedia in December 2019
Type of site
Internet encyclopedia project
Available inKorean
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
URLko.wikipedia.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Korean Wikipedia
Hangul
한국어 위키백과
Hanja
韓國語 위키百科
Revised RomanizationHangugeo Wikibaekgwa
McCune–ReischauerHan'gugŏ Wik'ibaekkwa

History

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Korean Wikipedia (update)
Articles 690765
Files 14652
Edits 38142101
Users 868547
Active users 2150
Admins 28

The Korean Wikipedia initially used an older version of MediaWiki. The software had problems representing Hangul, which limited usage. In August 2002, the software was upgraded and started to support non-English scripts such as Hangul.[3] However, Internet Explorer continued to have an encoding problem, which kept contributions to the encyclopedia low.[4] 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.[5] The Korean Wikipedia won the Information Trust Award in the general Internet culture branch in 2005.[citation needed][importance?]

Statistics

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Number of Articles Date Article
1 12 October 2002 지미 카터
10,000 5 June 2005 양자장론
20,000 12 February 2006 마다가스카르의 행정 구역
30,000 14 December 2006 카메이 에리
40,000 2 August 2007 텍스처 매핑
50,000 4 January 2008 바브리
60,000 24 April 2008 고기압
70,000 7 August 2008 영동대교
80,000 20 November 2008 큰곰자리 운동성단
90,000 25 February 2009 당연상인
100,000 4 June 2009 액세스권
150,000 15 December 2010 김지언 (1979년)
200,000 19 May 2012 보비 탬블링
250,000 3 October 2013 회피
300,000 5 January 2015 Rojo -Tierra-
350,000 3 June 2016 1809년 4월 14일 일식
400,000 22 October 2017 충청남도 동물위생시험소
500,000 15 June 2020 규장전운
600,000 16 August 2022 광기의 밍크스

Comparisons to other Korean wikis and information services

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Korean Wikipedia is the 2nd largest Korean language wiki, and the 33th most visited website of 2024 according to Similarweb.[6] It is behind Namuwiki, 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.[7][8] According to The Hankyoreh, Namuwiki has 7.2 times more traffic compared to the Korean Wikipedia as of October 2024.[1] It is generally attributed that Korean Wikipedia is less substantive and influential compared to NamuWiki.[1]

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, because other collective collaboration services such as Naver's Jisik-in (지식인), a Quora style ask-and-answer website, were already available, leading it to receive much more lackluster responses.[9]

Hangul and Hanja

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The Korean Wikipedia is written almost entirely in hangul. Hanja 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.[10]

Dialects

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There are two major standards in the Korean language: the South Korea standard, and the North Korea standard.[11] North Koreans are underrepresented on the Korean Wikipedia due to censorship of the internet in North Korea. 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 한국어 위키백과 Hangugeo Wiki-baekgwa. Hangugeo is the name for the Korean language in South Korea, and baekgwa is a clipped form of 백과사전 baekgwasajeon "encyclopedia".

Services derived from Korean Wikipedia

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Businesses heavily make use of the Korean Wikipedia in various ways since its license, the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License (CC BY-SA), allows modification and distribution for commercial purposes.

Empas integrated the Korean Wikipedia database in its search since 11 August 2005.[12] 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 from 6 July 2007.[13] Since 21 August, Daum mirrored Korean Wikipedia and English Wikipedia on its portal,[14] and Naver also started to present the search results from the Korean and English Wikipedia prior to others from 11 January 2008.[15]

Politics

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The South Korean right-wing youth group story K favors proactive involvement in contributing to Korean Wikipedia.[16][17]

Human rights groups have sent copies of the Korean Wikipedia to North Korea on USB sticks by balloon.[18]

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b c Park, Kang-soo (30 October 2024). "Ruling party and Korea Communications Commission 'Considering blocking access to Namuwiki'… Intention to censor and control criticism?". The Hankyoreh (in Korean).
  2. ^ "List of Wikipedias" (Web). Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2019.
  3. ^ http://web.archive.org/ – This site shows the Korean Wikipedia in 2002 with the Wikipedia Logo in 2002.
  4. ^ "대한민국". Archived from the original on 22 August 2003. Retrieved 22 August 2003. – Article 대한민국 in 2003. Encoding can be seen to be broken.
  5. ^ "Meta Milestones Page" (Web). Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 2005. Retrieved 6 September 2007.
  6. ^ "Republic of Korea: Top Websites Ranking". Similarweb. Archived from the original on 17 September 2023. Retrieved 28 June 2023.
  7. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 30 April 2021. Retrieved 5 October 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  8. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 8 December 2021. Retrieved 5 October 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20160701022444/http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2008/04/25/2008042500727.html?related_all
  10. ^ Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Hanja. Accessed 11 September 2010.
  11. ^ Choe, Sang-Hun (30 August 2006). "Koreas: Divided by a Common Language". The New York Times/ International Herald Tribune. Archived from the original on 8 October 2024.
  12. ^ 'Wikipedia', an encyclopedia authorized by netizens ...Empas – iNews24, 11 August 2005
  13. ^ Wikipedia on your phone - ETNews, 6 July 2007
  14. ^ Daum, Encyclopedia improved ... Archived 23 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine'Wikipedia' search presented Archived 23 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine – eDaily, 21 August 2007
  15. ^ Naver, Wikipedia Search service launched – ETNews, 11 January 2008. On Naver's search results page, the search results from Wikipedia, which was categorized as "knowledge base", were listed prior to the results categorized as "web page".
  16. ^ story K Official Website
  17. ^ 北 편들고 南 깎아내리는 위키피디아 (Korean Wikipedia that favors North Korea; does not favor South Korea) 16 July 2011 Donga Ilbo
  18. ^ Williams, Martyn (20 January 2014). "Wikipedia enters North Korea ... via balloon". North Korea Tech. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
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