Korean OSINT Tips
This article discusses strategies for conducting OSINT research related to South Korea and/or Korean language information. It is my hope that this post serves as an example of how to adjust your approach and push on in spite of hitting an obstacle like a foreign language.
1. How to Identify languages
The first challenge native English speakers may face is figuring out exactly which language you are looking at. While I don’t recommend relying too much on machine translations for East Asian languages (they’re getting better, but still not great), Google Translate does offer a pretty nifty feature that makes figuring out what language you’re looking at as easy as navigating to translate.google.com and copying and pasting a sample of the text.
2. Korean language recon tips
If you’re conducting people OSINT in particular, it is critical to realize some features about Korean naming conventions:
- Family names are one syllable long and come first.
- Given names (“first” names in English) come last and are traditionally two syllables long. Rarely a Korean given name may be one or three syllables long.
- Many native Korean speakers will choose a western-sounding name as part of their English studies and continue to use it long after. However, if the subject’s name is from the Bible, it may in fact be their original given name. If so, this would also identify the likely religion of your subject as Christian (most probably Catholic, which is considered separate from Christianity in Korea).
- Although there is a standardized transliteration system, it is not followed too literally. A name like 김태희, might theoretically be written as Kim Taehee, Kim Tae-hee, Kim Tae Hee, Kim Daehee, Kim Dae-hee, Kim Dae Hee, Gim Taehee, Gim Tae-hee, Gim Tae Hee, Gim Daehee, Gim Dae-Hee, Gim Dae Hee. That’s twelve different ways to write the same name in English, and I can think of even more possibilities. 김태희 is a pretty straightforward Korean name too.
- While most native Korean speakers will try hard to make their names as easy to pronounce in English as possible, a select minority will deliberately chose unusual, even strange, transliterations of their name. These might be aspiring public figures that want to be easily identifiable on foreign-language search engines.
Korean email address are often quite confusing as well. Our example 김태희 from above might would highly likely have an email address along the lines of klaxogml@xxxxx.com. Believe it or not, this email address is also based on their name!
When you see an email address like this, or even something with numbers attached as in klaxogml1989@xxxxx.com, it is pretty much the same thing as someone with the email address JohnDoe1989@xxxxx.com.
Here’s the key: all they are doing is switching the typing language of the keyboard from Korean to English. Then they type as if they were continuing to type in Korean.
This knowledge can be useful beyond interpreting email addresses. The same trick is often used with passwords.
As a quick test, I did a password search of the (in?)famous “Collection 1” email/password database for qlalfqjsgh, the keys matching the English characters you would have to type if you wanted to type 비밀번호, the Korean word for “password.” There were hundreds, if not thousands, of results. I didn’t bother trying to count.
3. Know the Korean Web 2.0 portals
To this day, google does not have much penetration in the Korean market. While I could write a long essay about the reasons why, at the end of the day, just know that it all really comes down to two portals: Naver.com and Daum.net.
Just like with google, these platforms are more than just search engines. They are practically their own ecosystem. A user may prefer Naver.com for their search engine, use an @naver.com email address, and very frequently have a personal naver.com blog that may or may not be in current use.
It is very much worth checking these platforms because, in my experience, Korean blogging platforms preserve exif data on photos. Yes, you read that correctly.
Furthermore, overseas Koreans will often prefer Korea-based Web 2.0 platforms for everything from news to shopping. This is why, if the trail you are following at all points in the direction of involving Korean nationals, you should absolutely be checking the Korean Web 2.0 portals.
In spite of Google’s low popularity in the Korean market, Youtube, on the other hand, is a hit. It’s pretty normal for people to have any manner of side hustles in Korea, and there is no shortage of young Koreans thinking they’re going to make a career out of uploading their foodie videos.
There is also a Korean version of YouTube called AfreecaTV.com that may be worth checking as well.
4. English language newspapers
When it comes to getting background on a topic in Korea, Wikipedia may get you farther than you expect, but there will come a time where you need a journalistic take.
Now each of these publications has their own idiosynchracies and you may not find the journalistic standards up to par with what you are used to (their websites aren’t really up to par either), but they are each considered established papers of record, at least in the Korean language versions.
Hankyorehi, A.K.A, ‘The Hani’
If your research related to Korea is more of a long-term project, I would highly recommend following journalists based out of Korea that are connected to the standard western outlets like CNN, Bloomberg, etc and active on Twitter. Although they may not publish articles every day about Korea, the journalists are often commenting on current events and providing extra insight.
5. The One Go-To Business OSINT Resource
As previously mentioned, many, (many, many, MANY) individual Koreans have some kind of side hustle they run. Whereas in the United States you can run a business as a sole proprietorship for some time, Korea requires business registration at a much lower threshold.
You can find business registration information through a government website, http://ftc.go.kr/. The site has records such as address, phone number, and names of persons involved with the business.
Navigating the site is a bit cumbersome if you aren’t familiar with Korean though, so your best bet is to search for the business name on naver.com and look for http://ftc.go.kr/ in the search results.
Wrap-Up
You don’t have to be a fluent Korean speaker to track down information on a source in or connected to Korea. These tips should get you off to a good start, but as with any OSINT investigation it will take additional digging and further pivots as you follow the trail.
I suspect that many of these tips would actually apply to an investigation in any language. Finding out the most popular search engine in a given country is a simple Google search. Name conventions too, for that matter.
Following a lead into another country or language may feel like a dead end at first, but with a little ingenuity it might just be little more than a speed bump on your way to actionable intelligence.
