Kim (Korean surname)

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Kim" Korean surname – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article possibly contains unsourced predictions, speculative material, or accounts of events that might not occur. Information must be verifiable and based on reliable published sources. Please help improve it by removing unsourced speculative content. (July 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Kim (Korean: 김; Hanja: 金) is the most common surname in Korea. As of the 2015 South Korean census, there were 10,689,959 people by this name in South Korea or 21.5% of the population. Although the surname is always pronounced the same, dozens of different family clans (bon-gwan) use it. The clan system in Korea is unique from the surname systems of other countries.^[2][3] Kim is written as 김 (gim) in both North and South Korea. The hanja for Kim, 金, can also be transliterated as 금 (geum) which means 'gold, metal, iron'. While romanized as Kim by 99.3% of the population, other rare variant romanizations such as Gim, Ghim, and Kin make up the remaining 0.7%.^[4]