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Rare Korean last names

Updated August 28, 2026 · Data: KOSIS 2015 census

Kim, Lee and Park cover half the country, but at the other end of the census are surnames so rare that most Koreans will never meet anyone who has one. This page lists every Korean surname with fewer than a thousand holders, explains where the rarest ones came from, and names the celebrities whose surnames make them instantly memorable.

Check how rare a surname is

Any spelling works — Lee, Yi, Rhee and 이 all find the same name. Also try Chinese or Vietnamese surnames to see whether they are Korean.

How rare is rare?

The 2015 census counted 191 Korean surnames with five or more holders. On this site we group them into five tiers:

Tier Holders Surnames Examples
Top 10 1,000,000+ 10 Kim, Lee, Park, Jung, Choi
Common 100,000 – 999,999 39 Shin, Han, Oh, Seo, Bae, Baek
Uncommon 10,000 – 99,999 42 Kong, Ham, Yeom, Seol, Ki, Gil
Rare 1,000 – 9,999 30 Tae, Bok, Pi, Ho, Bin, Sagong
Ultra-rare under 1,000 70 Ong, Gwok, Sam, Mangjeol

Everything from the Rare tier down — 100 surnames, held by about 220,000 people in total, less than half a percent of the population — is what a Korean would call a “rare surname” (희귀 성씨). Many of them are so unusual that when a Korean meets an Ong or a Gwok, the first question is usually “where is your family from?”

Ultra-rare Korean surnames (fewer than 1,000 people)

All 70, from the least rare down. Forty of these have fewer than 100 holders.

The 20 rarest Korean surnames

Because the census only publishes surnames held by five or more people, the floor is five. These are the smallest families in Korea:

Where the rarest surnames came from

Ancient Korean names that never grew

A few rare surnames are older than most common ones. Gwok (궉, 鴌) is written with a character that exists only in Korea and has 183 holders concentrated in Suncheon. Pi (피, 皮), Sa (사, 史) and Gam (감, 甘) appear in Goryeo-era records but stayed small because they never attached to a large aristocratic clan — and in Korea, surname growth followed clan power.

Chinese families who arrived as one household

Most ultra-rare surnames are Chinese-character names brought to Korea by a single immigrant — an envoy, a Ming general who stayed after the Imjin War, a merchant, a refugee scholar. Dokgo (독고, 獨孤), Dongbang (동방, 東方), Jegal (제갈, 諸葛) and Sagong (사공, 司空) are two-syllable Chinese compound surnames of this type. Their genealogies typically begin with one named ancestor who “came east” in the 13th to 17th centuries.

Japanese names from the 1945 generation

A handful of Japanese surnames survive in the Korean register, belonging to families who naturalised after liberation: Hwangmok (황목, 荒木 — Araki), Mubon (무본, 武本 — Takemoto), Deungjeong (등정, 藤井 — Fujii) and Mangjeol (망절, 網切). The last is the best-documented: it was founded by Mangjeol Il-rang, the son of a Japanese father and Korean mother who kept his father’s name in Korean pronunciation and became a well-known farmer in Gyeongsang province.

Surnames that vanished between censuses

The 2000 census recorded several surnames that did not reach five holders in 2015 and may now be extinct or simply uncounted: Kangjeon (강전, 51 people in 2000), Gae (개, 86), Sobong (소봉, 18), Jeup (즙, 4), Sam-as-杉, and Janggok (장곡, 52). If a family with one of these names still exists it is a handful of people at most.

Two-syllable surnames

Thirteen surnames have two syllables; only Namgung and Hwangbo have more than 10,000 holders. In dramas a two-syllable surname is shorthand for “old, unusual family”.

Celebrities with rare Korean surnames

Because rare surnames are memorable, they show up disproportionately in entertainment. A few well-known examples, with the surname’s 2015 population:

Choosing a rare surname for a character

Writers use rare surnames to signal that a character comes from an old or unusual family — a Namgung or Dokgo in a historical drama, a Seonu or Jegal in a fantasy. A word of caution: the rarest real surnames belong to very small families who can be identified from their name alone, so for fiction it is kinder to stay in the Uncommon or Rare tiers (Seol, Tae, Ki, Bin, Ho) than to borrow a name carried by eight people.

Frequently asked questions

What is the rarest Korean last name?

In the 2015 census the smallest surnames were Deungjeong (등정), Hwangmok (황목) and Tang (탕) with 5 holders each, followed by Mubon (무본) and Beon (번) with 6. The census does not publish names with fewer than five holders, so a few even rarer surnames may exist.

How many rare Korean surnames are there?

Of the 191 surnames counted in 2015, 70 have fewer than 1,000 holders and 40 have fewer than 100. Together the 100 surnames below 10,000 holders account for less than 0.5% of the population.

Is Namgung a rare surname?

Uncommon rather than rare — 21,313 people, ranking 79th. It is the most common two-syllable Korean surname, but because almost every other Korean surname is one syllable it stands out immediately.

Are two-syllable Korean surnames rare?

Yes. Only 13 exist, with fewer than 60,000 holders combined — about 0.1% of the population.