The 5,000 most common Korean words
Ranked by how often they actually turn up in spoken dialogue, not by how useful somebody guessed they would be.
Every number below is counted from a corpus, and the corpus is named at the bottom.
What each step buys you
Learn the first 100 words of Korean and you follow 25.0% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 53.9%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 6.2% | |
| 50 | 17.5% | |
| 100 | 25.0% | |
| 250 | 36.5% | |
| 500 | 45.3% | |
| 1,000 | 53.9% | |
| 2,000 | 62.7% | |
| 3,000 | 67.7% | |
| 5,000 | 74.0% | |
| 8,000 | 79.7% | |
| 10,000 | 82.4% | |
| 15,000 | 87.2% | |
| 20,000 | 90.5% |
Comfortable reading starts around 98%. Everything before that is still worth doing, but the first hundred words buy you a foothold, not comprehension.
The first 100 words of Korean
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1๋ด๊ฐ0.77%
- 2๊ทธ1.45%
- 3๋2.13%
- 4๋ด2.78%
- 5์3.42%
- 6์4.05%
- 7์ด4.64%
- 8๋ค5.21%
- 9๊ฑฐ์ผ5.75%
- 10์ข6.24%
- 11๊ทธ๋6.7%
- 12์์ด7.11%
- 13์7.51%
- 14๋7.87%
- 15๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ 8.23%
- 16์ฐ๋ฆฌ8.58%
- 17๋ค8.9%
- 18๋ฌด์จ9.21%
- 19ํ9.53%
- 20ํ์ง๋ง9.84%
- 21์10.15%
- 22์ด๋ป๊ฒ10.45%
- 23ํ 10.75%
- 24๊ทธ๋ฅ11.05%
- 25์ ๋ง11.34%
- 26๊ทธ๋ผ11.62%
- 27๊ฒ11.9%
- 28๊ฒ12.17%
- 29์์ด์12.44%
- 30์๋12.71%
- 31ํด12.97%
- 32์ฌ๊ธฐ13.23%
- 33๋13.49%
- 34์ ๊ฐ13.74%
- 35๋ 13.99%
- 36์ฐ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ14.24%
- 37๊ฑด14.48%
- 38์ 14.72%
- 39์ด์ 14.97%
- 40์ง๊ธ15.21%
- 41๊ทธ๊ฒ15.45%
- 42๊ฑธ15.68%
- 43๊ฑฐ15.91%
- 44์๋16.14%
- 45๋ค๊ฐ16.37%
- 46์์ด16.6%
- 47๋ผ16.81%
- 48์ 17.03%
- 49์ฐ๋ฆฐ17.24%
- 50์ 17.45%
- 51๋ชป17.66%
- 52์ข์17.86%
- 53๋น์ ์ด18.07%
- 54๋ค๋ฅธ18.26%
- 55๋18.46%
- 56๊ทธ๋ฐ18.65%
- 57๊ทธ๊ฑด18.83%
- 58๋๋ฌด19.02%
- 59๊ทธ๋์19.2%
- 60๊ทธ๋ ๊ฒ19.38%
- 61๋ค์19.56%
- 62์ด๊ฑด19.74%
- 63์ด๋ฐ19.92%
- 64๋๋20.09%
- 65๋ชจ๋ 20.26%
- 66๋น์ 20.43%
- 67๊ฑฐ์์20.6%
- 68๋น์ ์20.77%
- 69์20.93%
- 70์ข์21.1%
- 71์ค21.25%
- 72๋21.41%
- 73๋21.56%
- 74ํ๋21.7%
- 75ํ๊ณ 21.85%
- 76์๋21.99%
- 77๋๋22.14%
- 78์๋์ผ22.28%
- 79์์22.42%
- 80๊ฐ์ด22.57%
- 81์22.71%
- 82์ด๊ฒ22.85%
- 83์์ด์22.98%
- 84๊ด์ฐฎ์23.11%
- 85์ค๋23.24%
- 86๋ง์ด์ผ23.37%
- 87์ค23.5%
- 88๋23.62%
- 89๋23.75%
- 90๋๊ฐ23.87%
- 91์ด๋ค23.99%
- 92์์ฃผ24.11%
- 93๋ง24.23%
- 94์์ง24.35%
- 95์๋ผ24.47%
- 96์ง์ง24.58%
- 97๋ชจ๋24.7%
- 98๋ง24.81%
- 99๊ฐ์24.93%
- 100์ฌ๊ธฐ์25.04%
Open all 5,000 words in the codex →
In the codex you tap the ones you already know and the number moves. It stays in your browser, no account.
Where Korean comes from
Koreanic › Korean
Also alone.
Its alphabet was designed from scratch in 1443, on phonetic principles, and it shows.
Words Korean has that English never built
- ๋์น NOON-cheeThe skill of reading a room and adjusting before anyone speaks
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 5,182,889 tokens of Korean in total. Lists compiled by Hermit Dave, released under CC BY-SA 3.0. Subtitles skew towards conversation, which is the point: this is the language people speak, not the language people publish.