Korean Cards Data and Licenses

Last updated: 16 October 2026

This page explains where the Korean data in Korean Cards comes from and under which license it is distributed. It applies once the app is released and installed.

License of the data

The Korean data in the app combines several sources. It is an adaptation of material that is licensed under CC BY-SA, and it is distributed under CC BY-SA 4.0, as section 4.2 of CC BY-SA 2.0 KR permits for adaptations of the dictionaries of the National Institute of the Korean Language (NIKL). The app's own code is not covered by this license.

Where the data is

The data ships inside the app. The same database ships unencrypted in HangulHover, the companion app for the Mac, where it can be read with any SQLite tool. The HangulHover data page explains how to find the files.

Sources and licenses

• National Institute of the Korean Language (국립국어원): its learner and standard dictionaries. CC BY-SA 2.0 KR.
• Wiktionary: CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Tatoeba: human-written example sentences with English translations, CC BY 2.0 FR.
• FrequencyWords (based on OpenSubtitles 2018): word frequency, used only to build the levels. It is not part of the app.
• Public-domain short stories: 운수 좋은 날 by 현진건, 봄봄 by 김유정 and 메밀꽃 필 무렵 by 이효석.
• AI-generated content: produced with DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, Kimi K3 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 and reviewed. It is labelled "AI" in the app.

The full license notices are inside the app, under Acknowledgements in Settings.

Questions

Email Zhongwen-Hover@pm.me.

Korean Cards is developed by Matthias Holl.