kor

Kor, in coding and standards contexts, most commonly refers to two distinct three-letter identifiers: a language code and a country code.

As a language code, kor is the ISO 639-2 (and ISO 639-3) designation for Korean. It identifies the Korean language in library catalogs, metadata records, and other systems that use three-letter language codes. In practice, this code is used alongside the two-letter code ko (ISO 639-1) and is especially common in bibliographic and linguistic datasets. The Korean language is written in Hangul and is the official language of both South Korea and North Korea, though the primary regional standardization bodies associate it with the kor code.

As a country code, KOR serves as the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code for the Republic of Korea (South Korea). This three-letter code is widely used in international contexts such as the Olympics, FIFA, and other sports, as well as in global shipping and data systems. It distinguishes South Korea from North Korea, whose alpha-3 code is PRK.

In addition to these formal usages, lowercase kor may appear in various historical or dataset-specific abbreviations, but in most contemporary contexts the uppercase KOR is used for country codes and the lowercase kor for language identification in ISO 639-2/3 terminology.

See also: Korean language, ISO 639 codes, ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes, international sports coding.