# Korean Translation Services

> Korean translation services for documents from South Korea, such as the family relation certificate, by native human translators. Certified for USCIS.

https://roxotranslations.com/korean-translation/

Roxo Translations offers Korean translation services for documents from South Korea and from the Korean communities of the United States, Canada and Latin America, to and from English and other languages. Every translation is done by a human translator, native in the target language, and reviewed by a second one, never by machine translation.

Send a photo or scan of the document, see the price and the deadline instantly, and receive the translation as a PDF. For the United States it comes certified and accepted by USCIS, with the signed statement and notarization included, and the Hague apostille when it applies.

- Korean to English and English to Korean
- Certified for USCIS, with notarization included
- Instant online quote and fast delivery

## Where Korean is spoken and where your translation is accepted

Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea and one of the official languages of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in China. It has more than 75 million speakers. Korean immigration to the United States began in 1903, when the first workers arrived in Hawaii, and today large communities live in Los Angeles, New York and New Jersey, as well as in China, Japan, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Most Korean documents we receive come from South Korea, and the destination decides the type of translation.

| Where | What you need |
|---|---|
| United States: USCIS, courts, universities and employers | [Certified translation](https://roxotranslations.com/certified-translation/) into English, with the signed statement of accuracy and notarization included |
| Brazil: notary offices, universities and public agencies | [Sworn translation](https://roxotranslations.com/pt/traducao-juramentada/) into Portuguese, signed by a public sworn translator and valid nationwide. For Korean, we confirm before quoting whether it goes through English |
| South Korea, Canada and other countries | Ask the receiving authority which format it accepts: we tell you the options before quoting, including the [Hague apostille](https://roxotranslations.com/apostille/) when it applies |
| Korean consulates, embassies and immigration processes | The translation into Korean or into the language the authority asks for, with the apostille on the original when it is required |

## Korean language pairs we translate

These are the language pairs with Korean that we translate today, in both directions.

- [Korean to Arabic](https://roxotranslations.com/arabic-translation/)
- [Korean to English](https://roxotranslations.com/english-translation/)
- [Korean to Italian](https://roxotranslations.com/italian-translation/)
- [Korean to Russian](https://roxotranslations.com/russian-translation/)
- [Arabic to Korean](https://roxotranslations.com/arabic-translation/)
- [English to Korean](https://roxotranslations.com/english-translation/)
- [Italian to Korean](https://roxotranslations.com/italian-translation/)
- [Russian to Korean](https://roxotranslations.com/russian-translation/)

Need a pair that is not on the list? Talk to us: we answer within one hour, 7 days a week.

## Korean translation services: Hangul, names and documents from Korea

Korean is one language, but the standard of South Korea, based on the speech of Seoul, and the standard of North Korea, based on that of Pyongyang, differ in spelling and in some words, and Korean documents follow their own formats. A good translation keeps every name and number of the original and reads naturally to whoever receives it.

- Hangul and hanja: Korean is written in Hangul, an alphabet of 24 basic letters grouped into syllable blocks, so ㅎ, ㅏ and ㄴ form 한. Older records and some names also carry Chinese characters (hanja), such as 金 for Kim, and the translation keeps them when they appear in the original.
- South and North: some spellings change between the two standards, so the surname 李 is written 이, Lee, in the South and 리, Ri, in the North, and the word for woman is 여자 in the South and 녀자 in the North.
- Names: the family name comes first and usually has one syllable, as in 김민준, Kim Min-jun, and a married woman keeps her own surname. The same name can be romanized in several ways, such as Lee, Yi or Rhee, or Park and Bak, so tell us the spelling used in your passport or US documents when you order.
- Dates and numbers: dates are written year, month and day, as in 2026년 10월 3일 or 2026.10.03, which is October 3, 2026. Large numbers are counted in units of ten thousand (만), so 1만 5천 is 15,000, and amounts in won (원) stay as in the original.
- Documents from South Korea: since 2008 the old family register (hojeok) has been replaced by certificates such as the family relation certificate (가족관계증명서), the basic certificate (기본증명서) and the marriage relation certificate (혼인관계증명서). The translation reproduces every stamp, seal and note, including the red seal of the issuing office.

## The history of the Korean language

Korean is often described as a language isolate, with no proven relation to any other language family. For centuries it was written with Chinese characters, through systems such as idu, which adapted them to Korean grammar, while Classical Chinese was the written language of the court and of scholars.

In 1443, King Sejong the Great created a new alphabet, and in 1446 he published it in the Hunminjeongeum, “the correct sounds for the instruction of the people”. The book that explains it, the Hunminjeongeum Haerye, has been on the UNESCO Memory of the World register since 1997. Hangul became the script of official documents only at the end of the 19th century, and under Japanese rule, from 1910 to 1945, the Korean Language Society published in 1933 the unified spelling rules on which today’s spelling is based.

After 1945 the two Koreas kept the same language with different standards, and North Korea stopped using hanja in everyday writing. Today Korean has more than 75 million speakers, South Korea celebrates Hangul Day every October 9, and the communities in the United States, China, Japan, Brazil and Argentina still need their records translated for immigration, study and work.

## We also translate other languages

- [Polish translation](https://roxotranslations.com/polish-translation/)
- [Persian translation](https://roxotranslations.com/persian-translation/)
- [Pashto translation](https://roxotranslations.com/pashto-translation/)
- [Urdu translation](https://roxotranslations.com/urdu-translation/)
- [Amharic translation](https://roxotranslations.com/amharic-translation/)