There were about 170,000 Koreans forcibly relocated to Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan during Stalin's rule. That might have something do with it. But, from Wikipedia,

There were about 170,000 Koreans forcibly relocated to Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan during Stalin's rule. That might have something do with it. But, from Wikipedia, the ROK has about 20% of its population with the surname Kim/Gim/Ghim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Distribution_of_South_Korean_family_names.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Distribution_of_South_Kor...