Korean numbers: Sino-Korean and native Korean, explained

Korean has two complete sets of numbers and you need both. One came from Chinese centuries ago and is called Sino-Korean; the other, native Korean, is older than that borrowing. English does something similar counting “one, two, three” but switching to Latin for “primary, secondary, tertiary”. In Korean both sets are part of daily life, and the situation decides which you use.

Each system is ten words plus a few building blocks. The rules for choosing between them are consistent. By the end of this page you will be able to count to 999, give your age and read a clock, and you can test yourself here without an account.

Can't read 하나 yet? Start with the free Korean alphabet guide (about 90 minutes) and then come back.

Sino-Korean numbers run on ten words. Learn these and you can read most of the numbers you meet in Korea: prices, dates, bus routes, phone numbers.

From 11 upward there is nothing new to memorize. You stack what you already have. Eleven is 십일 (ten-one), twenty is 이십 (two-ten), and twenty-five is 이십오 (two-ten-five). The same pattern continues for larger numbers.

Larger numbers add three more words: 백 (100), 천 (1,000), and 만 (10,000). One detail to watch: Korean drops the 일 in front of these, so a hundred is 백, not 일백.

Step through numbers below and watch the pieces fit together.

The native numbers are the older, homegrown set. Sino-Korean handles the paperwork of life: money, dates, measurements. Native numbers handle the physical world: things you can point at and count, the hours on a clock, someone's age.

The tens have their own names. This is the main memorization work on this side:

Combining works the same way as Sino-Korean: 열하나 is 11, 스물다섯 is 25. Native numbers stop at 99. Above that, Koreans use Sino-Korean even when counting objects.

Learners ask this more than anything else, and the situation decides. The split is consistent enough that it stops feeling arbitrary after a few weeks of practice.

Hear the split in real sentences:

This surprises people who have wrestled with French or English, where twelve, twenty and eighty are words you simply have to know. Korean has no equivalent of “eleven” or “forty”. The numbers are transparent, so once you can count to ten you are reading numbers you have never seen before.

Sino-Korean is the tidier of the two: the tens are the ones with 십 attached. Twenty is two-ten (이십), thirty is three-ten (삼십), up to ninety. Native Korean asks more of you, because its tens are their own words. That is why they get their own table above.

Native numbers stack the same way, using the tens from the table above: 스물하나 is twenty-one, 서른둘 is thirty-two. They stop at ninety-nine. From one hundred upward everything switches to Sino-Korean, even when you are counting physical objects.

English chunks big numbers in threes, which is why we write commas every three digits and say “fifty thousand”. Korean chunks in fours. That mismatch is why a price tag reading 50,000 makes a learner hesitate: the comma is in the English place, but the word you need is 오만, and there is no Korean word for “thousand” doing the work you expect.

When you see a large figure, find the fifth digit from the right. Everything from there leftward is counted in 만. It feels awkward for a few weeks and then it does not.

Money is where the two systems separate most cleanly. Prices are always Sino-Korean, and no shop assistant will ever say 다섯 about a price. Learn this use first: it is the one you need on your first day in Korea.

Korea used to count age its own way, adding a year at birth and another every New Year, so a Korean age could run two years ahead of the number on a passport. A law changed that in June 2023, making the international reckoning (만 나이) the standard for official and everyday use. You may still hear the older count in casual conversation, especially among people comparing school years, but the number someone gives you now is almost always the one you expect.

Asking directly is blunt in Korean. The polite form is 나이가 어떻게 되세요?, which sidesteps naming the number at all.

Zero is the detail to remember. Korean has two words for it: 영 for maths and temperatures, 공 for reading digits aloud. Every Korean mobile number starts 010, which you hear as 공일공, not anything resembling “oh one oh”.

Korean rarely counts a noun on its own. Between the number and the thing sits a counter, a word that classifies what you're counting. English does this occasionally (“two sheets of paper”); Korean does it almost everywhere.

Before a counter, four native numbers shorten: 하나 → 한, 둘 → 두, 셋 → 세, 넷 → 네. Twenty changes too, to 스무, though only for exactly twenty; 21 is 스물한.

The counters you will use first:

The clock is where the two systems meet in a single phrase, which makes it excellent practice. The hours are native; the minutes are Sino-Korean.

Reading about numbers and producing them are different skills. Type these from memory. The box composes Hangul as you go, so you do not need a Korean keyboard installed, and the context line tells you which system to use.