(via Asiapundit) DPRK Studies shows that 45% of all Korean (South) people are either Kim, Lee or Park. If one use the same breakdown and project to the whole of Korea one has the following chart (source, 2000 figure)
- Top 3 concentration: 45%
- Top 10: 64%
- Top 15: 72%
- 22 names have over 1% population (see chart): 81%
The Han Chinese, being a much larger ethnic group, is less concentrated.
- Top 3 concentration: 23%
- Top 10: 44%
- Top 15: 51%
- 19 names have over 1% population (see chart): 56%
- It was said that there are some 15 family lines for Kim, Kim's need to check the line to avoid 'in-breeding' before getting maried. one is not supposed to marry within the same line.
Total Han Chinese population is about 1.2bn (92% of all Chinese)
The estimate is based on the population census of 1990, by sampling for each province and adjust for the population weight of the province. Taiwan is included in the survey. Regional difference is widely observed.
- Chen is the largest name in Guangdong and Taiwan (I suppose also in HK as well), over 10% of the local population
- 19% of all Huang's in China live in Guangdong (close to 8% of GD people)
- Wu represents over 5% of Fujian people, but only 2% in all China.
- Largest name Li, has a population of 95M, and close to 100M if including overseas Chinese dispora, biggest than the entire population of Germany or the 2 Korea's combined
- There are over 1000
commonsurname in large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai
- Many large names are probably expanded by ancient dynasties. e.g. Lee of Tang (many sinicized minorities and other Chinese were "rewarded" by being given the Emperor's name), Zhu of Ming, Liu of Han, Yang of Sui, Zhao of Song, etc.
- 1700 surnames (incl non-Han) in Taiwan in 1978, increased to about 2000 in 1989, but that is partly due to aborigine switch away from sinicized names
- see wiki for more
If the regional difference in Chinese is indicative, my extrapolation for N Korea must not be taken seriously (although the Korean, as a smaller country, is probably more homogeneous)
update: don't miss language hat's comment discussion, and faar outliers's post.