Bon-gwan: Korean clans explained

Every Korean has two family identifiers, not one: a surname and a bon-gwan (본관) — the town where the clan’s founding ancestor settled. “Kim” tells you almost nothing; “Gimhae Kim” tells you which of roughly 280 Kim lineages someone belongs to. This page explains how the system works, how the genealogy books that record it are kept, and which clans are the largest.

What bon-gwan means

Bon-gwan (本貫, “origin place”), also called gwanhyang or simply bon, is the ancestral seat of a clan — the place associated with its founder (sijo, 시조). A clan is defined by surname plus bon-gwan together: the Gimhae Kim (김해 김씨) are the descendants of King Suro of Gaya, whose capital was Gimhae; the Gyeongju Kim (경주 김씨) descend from Kim Alji, the legendary founder found in a golden box in Silla’s capital, Gyeongju. Both are Kim, but they have different founders, different genealogies and — until 1997 — could not intermarry within their own clan but could freely marry each other.

Bon-gwan does not mean the family lives there now, or ever did within living memory. A Gimhae Kim family may have lived in Seoul for twenty generations. The place name is a label for the lineage, fixed at the founding and never changed.

How many clans are there?

The 2015 census counted 36,744 surname–bon-gwan combinations, though the great majority are tiny or belong to naturalised citizens. Of the traditional Korean surnames, Kim has the most clans (about 280 with recorded members), followed by Lee (about 240) and Park (about 140). Most small surnames have a single bon-gwan — every Namgung is a Hamyeol Namgung, every Sunwoo a Taewon Sunwoo.

The largest Korean clans

Clan membership figures are from the 2015 census clan table and are rounded. The Gimhae Kim alone are about 9% of South Korea’s population.

Jokpo: the genealogy book

Each clan keeps a jokpo (족보, 族譜), a printed genealogy that records every male-line member from the founder down to the present generation, with birth and death dates, offices held, burial sites, and wives’ clans. Large clans publish updated editions every 30 years or so; the Andong Kwon jokpo of 1476 is the oldest surviving printed one. Traditionally only sons were recorded and daughters appeared as “married to X of the Y clan”; since the 1990s most clans record daughters and their children as well.

The jokpo also fixes the generation names (돌림자) — the syllable shared by all members of one generation — decades in advance, following the five-element cycle. Knowing your generation number and your branch (pa, 파) lets a clan association locate you in the book. A family that kept its jokpo through the colonial period and the Korean War is considered to have an unbroken record; many families lost theirs and rejoined the clan register by affidavit in the 1950s and 60s.

Branches (pa) and the clan association

A clan with millions of members is subdivided into branches named for a prominent descendant or a place — the Jeonju Lee has over 120 pa, each descending from a particular prince. Branches are managed by a clan association (종친회, jongchinhoe) that maintains the ancestral shrine, organises the annual rite at the founder’s grave (sije, usually in the tenth lunar month), publishes the jokpo, and in some cases runs scholarships. Membership is by birth; there is no joining.

How to find your bon-gwan

Ask an older relative — almost every Korean over 50 knows their bon-gwan and branch, and it is one of the first things a grandparent will tell a grandchild about the family. It also appears on the old family register (호적, replaced in 2008) and on most jokpo entries. If nobody in the family knows, the clan association for your surname can search the jokpo by your grandfather’s or great-grandfather’s name and birth year. Korean-Americans and adoptees searching for a birth family often start from the bon-gwan recorded on adoption paperwork, which narrows a Kim from ten million people to one lineage of a few hundred thousand.

Do Korean clans have crests?

Not in the European sense. Korean clans did not use heraldic coats of arms; identity was carried by the genealogy and the ancestral shrine. Some clan associations have adopted a modern logo, often a stylised version of the surname’s Hanja or a symbol from the founding legend (the Gimhae Kim use a design based on the Gaya royal tomb), but these are twentieth-century creations. Family crests seen online for Korean surnames are almost always modern designs or Japanese kamon mislabelled.

Frequently asked questions