Korea Toolbox
Practical tools and guides for anyone visiting, studying, or living in Korea
Tools
Four free calculators and converters, each built for a question Korea answers differently from everywhere else.
Korean Age Calculator
All three Korean ages at once, and which one the law actually uses.
Open →Live nowHangul Name Converter
Your name in Hangul, derived syllable by syllable from its sound.
Open →Live nowKorean Size Converter
Shoes in millimetres, clothes in 44/55/66 — decoded and converted.
Open →Live nowKorean Name Pronunciation
How a Korean name is really said, including the sounds spelling hides.
Open →Why the answers here are different
English writing about Korea is mostly copied from other English writing about Korea, so an error made once survives for years behind the language barrier. Every page here is traced back to a Korean source instead. Three examples of what that changes.
Korea counts age three ways, not two
Most explanations stop at "international age" and "Korean age". A third count, 연 나이, is the one the Youth Protection Act and the Military Service Act actually use, which is why the drinking age arrives on January 1 rather than on a birthday. School entry gets listed alongside those two everywhere — it works differently, and the statute says so.
Korean clothing sizes have no standard behind them
Charts translate 55 as "small" and stop. The number came from a 1981 national standard that encoded height and bust — 155 cm and 85 cm — and that standard was withdrawn in 1999. Nothing official has defined 55 since. That is why two brands' 66 fit differently, and no chart can tell you otherwise.
Google Maps half works here
"Google Maps doesn't work in Korea" is repeated so often that visitors assume the app is useless. Transit directions work and will hand you a usable subway route. Walking, driving and cycling are the parts that are missing — which matters, because the last few hundred metres of any trip here are on foot.
Latest guides
14 guides on travel, language, and daily life in Korea — each one checked against Korean sources rather than repeated from other travel sites.