Suzy, Park Seo-joon and Son Ye-jin Went to the Same School. So Did 349 Others on Our List.
We have school records for 4,535 of the 9,249 people on our roster. Among the 55 schools large enough to count, ten hold 54.7 per cent of them — and one holds 352 on its own.
If you have watched Korean film or television for any length of time, you have watched one school. Cho Jung-seok, Bae Suzy, Park Seo-joon, Son Ye-jin and Lee Joon-gi all passed through Seoul Institute of the Arts, and so did 347 other people on our roster — 352 in all, more than any other school by a clear margin.
That is the headline. The structure underneath it is the more interesting part.
Ten schools, half the field
We hold 9,249 people. Wikidata records a school for 4,535 of them. Among the 1,529 schools that appear, 55 have at least fifteen of our people — enough that a count means something — and those 55 hold 3,399 people between them.
| People | Share of the 3,399 | |
|---|---|---|
| Top school | 352 | 10.4% |
| Top 3 | 868 | 25.5% |
| Top 5 | 1,213 | 35.7% |
| Top 10 | 1,858 | 54.7% |
Ten schools out of 1,529 account for more than half.
Who is at the top
| School | People | Five most-translated alumni |
|---|---|---|
| Seoul Institute of the Arts | 352 | Cho Jung-seok, Bae Suzy, Park Seo-joon, Son Ye-jin, Lee Joon-gi |
| Chung-Ang University | 310 | Kim Soo-hyun, Park Shin-hye, Lee Young-ae, Hyun Bin, Kim Bum |
| Dongduk Women’s University | 206 | Jung Ho-yeon, Bang Min-ah, Park Gyu-ri, Lee Sung-kyoung, Lim Semi |
| Dongguk University | 200 | Jun Ji-hyun, Im Yoon-ah, Lee Jung-jae, Han Hyo-joo, Park Min-young |
| Kyung Hee University | 145 | Gong Yoo, Baekhyun, G-Dragon, Rain, Lee Hyori |
“Most translated” here means the number of Wikipedia language editions that carry a page for that person — 57 for Cho Jung-seok, 52 for Kim Soo-hyun, 49 for Jun Ji-hyun and Gong Yoo. It is a measure of how far a name has travelled, not of how good anyone is.
The second number: whether the name is readable in English at all
Each school also has a share of its people whose names appear on English Wikipedia. It is not the same everywhere.
| School | Name on English Wikipedia |
|---|---|
| Dongguk University | 93% |
| Chung-Ang University | 91% |
| Kyung Hee University | 90% |
| Seoul Institute of the Arts | 87% |
| Dongduk Women’s University | 72% |
Dongduk sits twenty-one points below Dongguk. Both are large, both are in Seoul, and both produced names you would recognise — Jung Ho-yeon on one side, Jun Ji-hyun on the other. What differs is how much of the rest of each cohort an English-language reader can look up at all.
We are not going to tell you why. English Wikipedia coverage follows English-language sourcing, and we did not measure sourcing.
What we did not build, and why
Half of our roster has no school recorded — 4,714 people. That half is not an error in the data and it is not a zero; it is simply not written down, and we count it as unknown.
We also did not build the page people search for most in this area. “K-pop idol height” draws more autocomplete demand than anything about schools, and Wikidata records a height for 320 of our 9,249 people — 3.5 per cent. A “tallest idol” ranking built on 3.5 per cent would be a page that states a wrong answer with total confidence, so there isn’t one.
Wikidata “educated at” for the 9,249 people in our roster, resolved 25 August 2026; language-edition counts from sitelinks on the same date. Schools with fewer than fifteen of our people are counted in the totals but not listed. This counts where people studied. It says nothing about what studying there did for them.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Wikidata — educated at (P106/P69) for the 9,249 people in our K-culture roster, resolved to school entities; language-edition counts per person from sitelinks · https://www.wikidata.org/
- K Culture Wire — Our own roster build (wikitip-schools.json, built 2026-08-25). A school is listed only if at least fifteen people on the roster attended it.
What we checked
- Of 9,249 people on the roster, 4,535 have a school recorded and 4,714 do not — so this measures slightly under half of the roster.
- 1,529 distinct schools appear. 55 clear the fifteen-person line and hold 3,399 people between them.
- Within those 55: the top school holds 352 (10.4 per cent), the top three hold 868 (25.5 per cent), the top five 1,213 (35.7 per cent) and the top ten 1,858 (54.7 per cent).
- Seoul Institute of the Arts, 352 — Cho Jung-seok, Bae Suzy, Park Seo-joon, Son Ye-jin and Lee Joon-gi are its five most-translated alumni, at 57, 51, 42, 40 and 37 Wikipedia language editions.
- Chung-Ang University, 310 — Kim Soo-hyun (52 editions), Park Shin-hye (46), Lee Young-ae (43), Hyun Bin (40), Kim Bum (37).
- Dongguk University, 200 — Jun Ji-hyun (49), Im Yoon-ah (48), Lee Jung-jae (47), Han Hyo-joo (40), Park Min-young (40).
- Share of each school's people whose name appears on English Wikipedia: Dongguk 93 per cent, Chung-Ang 91, Kyung Hee 90, Seoul Institute of the Arts 87, Dongduk Women's University 72.
What we left out, and why
- The 4,714 people on our roster with no school recorded anywhere in Wikidata — 51 per cent of it. They are counted as unknown, never as zero.
- The 1,474 schools with fewer than fifteen of our people. They exist in the data and are counted in the totals below, but get no page, because a school with three names would rank on noise.
- Height. Wikidata records a height for 320 of 9,249 people — 3.5 per cent. 'K-pop idol height' draws real search demand and we still did not build it: naming a tallest from 3.5 per cent would be a page that is confidently wrong.
- Any claim that attending a school caused a career. We counted where people studied, not what it did for them.
- Majors, graduation, dropping out, and years attended. Wikidata does not record these consistently and we did not guess.
Written from the same data
If you work in this business
Everything on this page is measured from the same weekly Netflix lists, per market and per title. We publish the pages free; what we sell is the same measurement cut to one company's catalogue.
What a company sheet contains, and what it cannot tell you →
What do you make of this?
We counted it. What it means is yours to decide.