And from the current president, Park Geun-hye, to rapper PSY (born Park Jae-sang), almost one in ten is a Park. Taken together, these three surnames account for almost half of those in use in South Korea today. Neighbouring China has around 100 surnames in common usage; Japan may have as many as 280,000 distinct family names. Why is there so little diversity in Korean surnames?

 

Korea's long feudal¹ tradition offers part of the answer. As in many other parts of the world, surnames were a rarity until the late Joseon dynasty (1392-1910). They remained the privilege of royals and a few aristocrats² (yangban) only. Slaves and outcasts such as butchers, shamans and prostitutes, but also artisans, traders and monks³, did not have the luxury of a family name. As the local gentry⁴ grew in importance, however, Wang Geon, the founding king of the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392), tried to mollify it by granting surnames as a way to distinguish faithful subjects and government officials. The gwageo, a civil-service examination that became an avenue for social advancement⁵ and royal preferment, required all those who sat it to register a surname. Thus elite⁶ households adopted one. It became increasingly common for successful merchants too to take on a last name. They could purchase an elite genealogy⁷ by physically⁸ buying a genealogical book (jokbo)—perhaps that of a bankrupt yangban—and using his surname. By the late 18th century, forgery⁹ of such records was rampant¹⁰. Many families fiddled¹¹ with theirs: when, for example, a bloodline came to an end, a non-relative could be written into a genealogical book in return for payment. The stranger, in turn, acquired a noble surname.

 

As family names such as Lee and Kim were among those used by royalty¹² in ancient Korea, they were preferred by provincial¹³ elites¹⁴ and, later, commoners when plumping for a last name. This small pool of names originated from China, adopted by the Korean court and its nobility in the 7th century in emulation¹⁵ of noble-sounding Chinese surnames. (Many Korean surnames are formed from a single Chinese character.) So, to distinguish one's lineage from those of others with the same surname, the place of origin of a given clan¹⁶ (bongwan) was often tagged onto the name. Kims have around 300 distinct regional origins, such as the Gyeongju Kim and Gimhae Kim clans¹⁷ (though the origin often goes unidentified except on official documents). The limited pot of names meant that no one was quite sure who was a blood relation; so, in the late Joseon period, the king enforced a ban on marriages between people with identical bongwan (a restriction¹⁸ that was only lifted in 1997). In 1894 the abolition¹⁹ of Korea's class-based system allowed commoners to adopt a surname too: those on lower social rungs often adopted the name of their master or landlord, or simply took one in common usage. In 1909 a new census-registration law was passed, requiring all Koreans to register a surname.

 

Today clan origins, once deemed an important marker of a person's heritage and status, no longer bear the same relevance²⁰ to Koreans. Yet the number of new Park, Kim and Lee clans is in fact growing: more foreign nationals, including Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipinos, are becoming naturalised Korean citizens, and their most popular picks for a local surname are Kim, Lee, Park and Choi, according to government figures; registering, for example, the Mongol Kim clan, or the Taeguk (of Thailand) Park clan. The popularity of these three names looks set to continue.

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