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Language code: ko

Technical information about ISO 639 language code ko

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Korean language, designated by the ko code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

ko

Name

Official

Korean

Native

한국어

Family
Koreanic
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Plural rules

More info

Language varieties
Seoul (Central)GangwonChungcheongGyeongsangJeollaPyonganHamgyongHwanghaeJeju
Related languages
Jejueo (Jeju language)Yukjin KoreanKoryo-mar
Key facts
Often treated as a language isolate despite proposals linking it to Altaic familiesUses Hangul, a scientifically designed featural alphabet created in the 15th centuryAgglutinative morphology with dozens of verb suffixes marking tense, aspect, mood, and politenessDefault word order is Subject-Object-Verb, with extensive topic-comment constructionsElaborate honorific system governs vocabulary and grammar to reflect social hierarchy.
Sample phrase

안녕하세요, 어떻게 지내세요?

Character encodings

EUC-KR, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Korean belongs to the Koreanic language family. It is the official language of both South Korea and North Korea, and it is also used by minority groups in the Yanbian Prefecture and Changbai regions of China, as well as in Primorsky Krai in Russia. It is written using the Hangul script. It is estimated that there are more than 80 million speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

South Korea

50M

North Korea

25M

China

1.2M

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Korean speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

Related locale codes

ko-KP – Korean (North Korea)

ko-KR – Korean (South Korea)

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