The K-Iceberg

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Past versions of the K-Iceberg can be found here, or view versions 1 to 93 in an animated gif.

A coworker once asked me, "What do you think of K-pop, K-drama, K-film, KKK?" What you see on this page is my attempt to answer that question.

After seeing an image online of the "Cultural Iceberg" (of which there are many versions), I took one and created the K-Iceberg. While culture is indeed a complex concept and the iceberg demonstrates that culture is composed of a lot more things than we think, the Korean version shows how one simple type of branding has become widespread across many industries in Korea.

"Imagine people worldwide eating a rice variety developed with Korean technology and cultivated with Korean agricultural machinery while listening to K-pop or watching K-dramas," a director of the RDA wrote as translated by KOCIS.

"Korea's 'K' is considered a seal of quality. Such global reach has not only enhanced Korea's status but also added a unique touch to the international community's diversity and development," Deputy Minister & Ambassador for Climate Change at Ministry of Foreign Affairs Yoo Yeon-chul wrote. "Going forward, I am confident that the symbolic letter 'K' could also be added to climate change response, a pressing global issue."

"We feel proud of our Koreanness when we see words with that added 'K-'," first lady Kim Jung-sook said.

"The K-wave that began with K-pop now expands to everything with the letter 'K' in the front...Going beyond covering K-pop songs and dance moves, people from all over the world are now aiming to follow the trends that start with 'K,' including 'K-lifestyle,'" says the Seoul Tourism Organization.

"So it would be no exaggeration to say that, just like K-pop, K-culture and K-quarantine, the level of Korea's fire service too is that of a developed economy. And yet, we have so much more work to do, especially to prepare ourselves against future risks such as the climate crisis and other pandemics. In particular, we ought to accelerate the application of future technologies such as big data, robotics, drones, IoT and AI in firefighting," the commissioner of the National Fire Agency said in an op-ed. "And through such innovations, on this 59th Firefighting Day, we hope 'K-fire service' will have an even stronger footing with its disaster response system empowered by the latest technologies, to serve the world at large."

"The Korean financial wave has enough potential to grow into the next BTS," said Moon Chang-yong, chairman of KAMCO, the "BTS of the financial sector."

¡°Just as Korea¡¯s cultural content, such as K-pop and K-drama, is drawing a wide range of attention and love from the world, K-finance, which has been developed based on the solid growth of Korea¡¯s real economy, is also expected to leap forward, anchoring on trusts and innovation,¡± Lee stressed.

The chief of the FSS also delivered his hope for K-Finance in his keynote speech at the event: "I hope K-finance can bring forth fresh energy across the country, as K-pop has been doing."

Jambinai told me in an interview: "We don't want to be categorized as K-music, or K-something. European or overseas listeners think Jambinai is just Jambinai, not the K-band Jambinai or K-whatever."

The idea when I started to collect these was that these various other things would benefit from the success of K-pop, which was absolutely taken for granted by the Korean government and much of civil society long before it was apparent in the real world. Many articles mentioning these things mention the unstoppable global popularity of K-pop, dating back to before "Gangnam Style" even.

I found out about most of the first entries here, and the ones up top, from Korean government publications, which were zealous to add even more ridiculous ones such as K-Roads. But over time I've encountered others reading the news, or just driving around. I occasionally post the latest version on Facebook, and people shower me with other entries.

To qualify for the K-Iceberg, the term must be put in use by a notable enough source, preferably a government agency, but others include private companies, artists, and celebrities. It does not include K-pop fan sites, which would include Knetizen (which notably doesn't hyphenate "Kpop"), K-craze and the K-grammar lessons on the "Learn Korean Through K-POP" website. I'm also trying to avoid journalists and academics coining the terms to talk about what they study, such as K-spaces, K-prosecution, K-Trumpism, K-gapjil, K-garden, but I will be watching them. I have decided that sponsored posts on Facebook do meet notability, regardless of the source and other notability concerns, because sponsored content reaching me feels like a big deal.

The name also must begin with a K or k and a hyphen or substitute punctuation such as an apostrophe, period, or asterisk. This disqualifies names that have no hyphen (K League, K Shop, K bank, K Car, K Models) or have no space at all (KProfiles, KLPGA, KFEZ, KCSI, KCIA, KCDC). I was introduced to Kjun which is a good pun for a Korean-style cajun restaurant, and will be monitoring for the appearance of a K-jun which would qualify it.

There are also a lot of websites for things that have proper names, but add a k at the start of the URL for half-assed branding they probably didn't follow through on, such as Hypertension Seoul 2019 run by Korean Society of Hypertension, Kminigolf Shinhan Financial Group's news site kbanker, Korea Asset, Korea Adoption Services, Korean Housing Association, Korea Asset Investment Securities, Korea Institute of Youth Facility & Environment, Korea Waste Association, World Heritage Promotion Team of Korean Tidal Flat. Most amazingly, there's a KAIDS and I'll be watching both for future hyphenation. I see you, and there's likely to be a tweaking of the rules someday to add all of you.

Due to poor consistency, a name may be branded several different ways, and if it is disqualified by format, it only needs to appear in the proper format in one place that is official enough. For instance The-K Twin Towers was ineligible because the hyphen was on the wrong side of the K, but it is "The K-Twin Towers" above the entrance. Same thing happened with The-K Hotel if you look at the URL, and Tournament-K Hansik. This article refers to K-Care but in official sources it is only ever KCARE so far; also there is mention of a different K-care in this article but it does not meet notability standards unless we determine the official said it and it is not newspaper originated (update: K-Care has been accepted, but from a different origin). I am keeping track of almost-rans and waiting for an example of them being formatted properly, or for them to step further forward into K-dom.

I have tried to exclude sources that don't meet notability standards, such as K-pop fan sites and my own friends giving me suggestions they made up. The K also should represent Korea, although sometimes it may stand for kimchi or Kristian, depending on context and who you ask. For instance some have not met notability standards for their use, such as K-chat and K-funny. K-export is also not quite up to notability yet, surprisingly. In Germany there are events like K-Fair, K-Trade Fair, K-show, etc, which I'm excluding.

It also is preferable that the concept is apparent, even if it's obscure or highly technical jargon; I've been on the fence about K-Exciting and K-Rookies, for instance, and still am about K-master, K-demo (demolition? demonstration?), K-ACE, K-Turtle Wedding Hall, K-CAB, (2), K-CLIP, K-plus (which is a brand of some component at my office door). And for that matter the K probably should stand for Korea, or at least have a Korean connection. Maybe in the future the rules will change to let them all in, or I'll find an example where they stylise it differently, or they slip up just once and hyphenate.

As some of the items have quite long names, usually because they are part of an event name or slogan, I will trim them down to a core concept, even if this somewhat obscures their original purpose. The longest is probably "K-route expedition unit," which didn't make sense to trim. I have taken liberties with truncating "K-COVID-19 response strategy." I also reserve the right to make the name format more uniform, such as changing the punctuation to a hyphen, capitalising the K, or lowercasing the following word so it doesn't look as much like a proper name.

As it gets more crowded, I've found more difficulties curating the K-Iceberg. Two duplicate entries have been found and removed. Also, my standards for what qualifies have tightened. I decided rather than remove entries, I would cross them off. Some remain on there for humorous purposes. It became necessary to list all the entries in text, because it was becoming too difficult to tell whether a new entry was already on the K-Iceberg.

Most of the terms on the list are English, but as we've gone on and they've become more specialised, a few Korean-language ones have come out. I've been trying to be loyal to the terms, only offering them in English when there is an official English translation, when the Korean is just an English word expressed in Hangeul, or when the translation is extremely apparent without ambiguity. Many entries have been left in the original Korean, and in the future I expect most of them to go toward official English translations, but it's likely some bilingual duplicates will stick around, such as K-bangyeok and a number of English-language versions. Whatever happens, everything will be listed in English or phonetic English on this site, because I don't use Hangeul here due to compatibility issues.

Below is a list of sources for as many of the K-Iceberg items as possible. For most of the time, I've been uninterested in recording the sources, so a few are currently unknown, but in most cases they are not the most outlandish ones.

If you know the origin of any of the unknown ones, or have others to add, don't hesitate to contact me.

If you want to use the K-Iceberg for a presentation or publication or something, you're free to do so, although I appreciate a shout-out through proper citation and I especially appreciate a proof photo. So far I have spoken to four academics who have used it.

You can read more here