Culture: Billboard Top 20 Korean family names

I haven't been too good on remembering some of the Korean names during my stay here. On the other hand, the Korean family names...... those are easy, because there are only a handful that I need to remember! Its always either a Mr. Kim, or Ms. Lee and occasionally a Mr. Byon, as well as Jung here and there.

So we had this discussion about what is the most popular family name in Korea, and how many exactly??

I came up with the following search result last night from Wikipedia.com and the Rep. of Korea National Statistics Bureau. Its a census done in 2000.

Dude...... its amazing that 20% of the ~46 million population has the "Kim" family name! I mean, you could guess, and probably get it right. Otherwise, try "Lee" or "Park". That should work too.

If you forgot someone's name, try the "Good morning Mr. Kim, erm...... I mean Lee, erm..... Park?" thing I always do. It works ;)