Korean Wikipedia

History

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. From October 2002 to July 2003, the number of articles increased from 13 to 159, and in August 2003 it reached 348. In September 2003, the Hangul problem was solved. From September 2003, 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 10,000 articles on 4 June 2005.

On 16 April 2011, discussions were held to promote the formation of a group to support Wikimedia projects in South Korea. Subsequently, on 10 March 2012, the Wikimedia Korea Chapter Preparation Committee was established. A founding general meeting was held on 19 October 2014, and finally, on 4 November 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.

Milestones

Comparisons to other Korean wikis and information services

Korean Wikipedia is the 2nd largest Korean language wiki, and the 33rd most visited website of 2024. According to The Hankyoreh, Namuwiki had 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's Jisik-in (지식인), a Quora style ask-and-answer website, were already available, leading to much more lackluster responses.

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 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 (ko). "Hangugeo" is the name for the Korean language in South Korea, and "baekgwa" is a clipped form of 백과사전 (ko, "encyclopedia").

Services derived from Korean Wikipedia

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. In 2005, the web portal Empas integrated the Korean Wikipedia database in its search tool. The feature to search Korean Wikipedia using a mobile phone with a wireless Internet connection through the web portal Nate was available to the subscribers of SK Telecom from 6 July 2007. Since 21 August, Daum mirrored Korean Wikipedia and English Wikipedia on its portal, and Naver also started to present the search results from the Korean and English Wikipedia prior to others from 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".

Politics

The South Korean right-wing youth group story K favors proactive involvement in contributing to Korean Wikipedia. Human rights groups have sent copies of the Korean Wikipedia to North Korea on USB sticks by balloon.

References

References

1. (2025). "List of Wikipedias". Wikimedia Foundation Inc..
2. (2005). "Meta Milestones Page". [[Wikimedia Foundation Inc.]].
3. "위키백과:오프라인 모임/2011년 4월 16일". Korean Wikipedia.
4. "위키미디어 한국/창립준비위원회 총회 결의". Korean Wikimedia.
5. "Introduction page of Wikimedia Korea Association". [[Google Sites]].
6. "Republic of Korea: Top Websites Ranking". [[Similarweb]].
7. 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]].
8. "한국어 위키피디아는 안통한다?". [[The Chosun Ilbo]].
9. Choe, Sang-Hun. (30 August 2006). "Koreas: Divided by a Common Language". [[The New York Times]] / [[International Herald Tribune]].
10. (11 August 2005). "네티즌이 만드는 '위키백과사전' 검색 서비스...엠파스". iNews24.
11. (6 July 2007). "휴대폰으로 위키피디아를~". ETNews.
12. (21 August 2007}}{{Dead link). "Daum, Encyclopedia improved ...". eDaily.
13. (16 July 2011). "北 편들고 南 깎아내리는 위키피디아". [[Donga Ilbo]].
14. Williams, Martyn. (20 January 2014). "Wikipedia enters North Korea ... via balloon". [[North Korea Tech]].