A SOUTH Korean saying claims that a stone thrown from the top of Mount Namsan, in the centre of the capital Seoul, is bound to hit a person with the surname Kim or Lee. One in every five South Koreans is a Kim—in a population of just over 50 million. And from the current president, Park Geun-hye, to rapper Psy (born Park Jae-sang), almost one in ten is a Park. Taken together, these three surnames account for almost half of the population of South Korea today. Neighbouring China has around 100 surnames in common usage; Japan may have as many as 280,000 distinct family names. Why is there so little diversity in Korean surnames?
