About This Site
Korea Toolbox publishes free tools and researched guides about Korea for people who do not read Korean. It is run from Korea by hiyahoya, a backend software developer based here. There are currently four tools and 14 guides.
The problem this site is for
English-language writing about Korea tends to be copied from other English-language writing about Korea. An error introduced once gets repeated until it reads as consensus, and because the original Korean source is behind a language barrier, almost nobody goes back to check.
The result is a specific kind of failure: the general shape is right and the detail that actually matters is wrong. A Korean age calculator that returns two numbers when three systems are in use. A size chart that says 55 means small without mentioning that the standard defining it was withdrawn in 1999. A guide that says Google Maps does not work in Korea when transit directions work fine and walking directions are the missing part.
Reading Korean is the whole advantage here, and it is the only one this site claims.
How pages are checked
Claims about law, prices and procedure are traced to a Korean primary source before publishing, not to another blog. In practice that means:
- Statutes — the National Law Information Center for anything legal. The age pages cite 청소년보호법 and 병역법 by article because those two are why the drinking age and conscription still run on a calendar-year count, while school entry does not, despite being listed with them everywhere.
- Language rules — the National Institute of Korean Language. The pronunciation tool implements 표준 발음법 by article number and shows which one fired.
- Operators and agencies — the organisation that actually runs the thing. Airport procedure comes from the airport, fares from the transit operator.
- Contemporary reporting, when a rule has a history worth knowing — the 1981 clothing standard and its 1999 withdrawal are documented in Korean newspaper archives rather than in any English chart.
Where Korean sources disagree, or where no standard exists, the page says so. Asked whether 김연아 is pronounced [기며나] or [김녀나], the National Institute of Korean Language answered that no standard pronunciation has been established. The tool reports that rather than picking one and sounding confident.
Rules this site holds itself to
- No invented experience. Pages do not contain first-person anecdotes staged to sound authentic. What is here is knowledge that can be checked, not a story about the writer.
- Measurement and convention are labelled differently. A shoe size in millimetres is a measurement and converts exactly. A clothing size letter is a market habit with nothing official behind it. Presenting the second as if it were the first is how most conversion charts mislead people.
- Nothing is written for payment. No sponsored posts, no paid placements, no link exchanges, no affiliate-driven recommendations.
- Corrections are the priority. Korean rules change often. A reader who reports an outdated fare or a superseded rule gets answered before anything else in the inbox.
What is here
The tools cover Korean age, writing a foreign name in Hangul, Korean shoe and clothing sizes, and how a Korean name is actually pronounced. Each one exists because Korea does something differently enough that a generic converter gets it wrong.
The guides cover travelling here, learning the language, and daily life — transit cards, delivery apps, maps, tipping, power outlets, tax refunds, reading Hangul.
Found something wrong? The contact page explains what makes a correction quick to act on.