Park Han-sol reports on Korea's financial regulators, along with fintech and insurance. She previously wrote about the art world, from biennales and exhibitions to fairs and auctions, with a focus on Seoul and the figures shaping the scene. Before joining The Korea Times, she spent a year at ABC News' Seoul bureau, contributing to coverage of major Asia-Pacific events.
Building 'unified' digital family tree with FamilySearch
Kim Jeong-woon, country manager of the nonprofit FamilySearch, speaks at the forum "Korea's Jokbo, Women's Jokbo: Not Just Grandfathers, but Grandmothers Too" hosted by The Korea Times at Seoul Global Center in downtown Seoul, Tuesday. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
By Park Han-sol
At “Korea’s Jokbo, Women’s Jokbo: Not just Grandfathers, but Grandmothers too,” held as part of the Korea Times Global Business Club’s 2026 forum, Kim Jeong-woon, country manager of the nonprofit FamilySearch, opened her speech with a story about when she first set out to trace her own ancestry in her 20s.
The search began at home, with a “gaseungbo,” a privately kept family genealogy her father handed down to her. While it allowed her to trace her paternal line with relative ease, she was struck by what it left out: women who appeared without surnames and/or given names.
Her maternal lineage was therefore much harder to reconstruct. What made the effort more daunting was the fact that her mother had lost touch with relatives who held the family jokbo. Turning to official family registry documents, Kim managed to trace four generations on her mother’s side. Determined to go further, she eventually reached a distant relative who, in retirement, had taken it upon himself to reintegrate his branch of the family into the genealogy.
Using FamilySearch’s digital platform, she compiled her research into what she called a unified family tree — one that placed maternal and paternal lines side by side.
Kim then turned her focus to introduce FamilySearch itself: a collaborative, ever-expanding global genealogy database built by users worldwide. Today, its shared family tree contains more than 1.6 billion recorded ancestors. Contributors who identify common forebears work together, adding sources and documentation to enhance the accuracy of each entry.
For Korean users in particular, the platform offers online genealogical resources spanning more than 120 surnames and 600 clans.