Lee (Korean surname)

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Lee, I, or Yi (이) is the second-most-common surname in Korea, behind Kim (김). As of the South Korean census of 2015, there were 7,306,828 people by this name in South Korea or 14.7% of the population.^[1]

Historically, 李 was officially written as Ni (니)^[2] in Korea. The spelling officially changed to I (이) in 1933 when the initial sound rule (두음 법칙) was established. In North Korea, it is romanized as Ri (리) because there is no distinction between the alveolar liquids /l/ and /r/ in modern Korean.

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