Park Hae-young
Overview
Park Hae-young is a personal name used in Korea. It is a combination of the surname Park (朴) and the given name Hae-young (海英·海榮·海映, etc.), and it has been used for both men and women. Rather than referring to one specific person, it is a name with namesakes across various fields, used by people active in areas such as film and video, games and IT, academia, public institutions, and arts and culture. Accordingly, this document covers the composition and distribution of the personal name 'Park Hae-young' itself and organizes namesakes by field.
Main content
Composition and etymology of the name
'Park' is known as the third most populous surname in Korea after Kim (金) and Lee (李). 'Hae-young' is a name made by combining the Sino-Korean character 海 (hae, sea) with 英 (yeong, flower/outstanding), 榮 (yeong, glory), 映 (yeong, to shine/reflect), etc. It often carries an auspicious meaning such as 'as broad and outstanding as the sea' or 'glory as broad as the sea.' As more households use only Hangul names, many cases have no Sino-Korean character representation, and for this reason, even names with the same pronunciation may have different character combinations from person to person.
Characteristics as a personal name
'Hae-young' is classified as a name with a soft pronunciation, made up of two syllables, and thus easy to use regardless of gender. It has appeared steadily among those born from the 1960s to the 1990s, and rather than being extremely concentrated in a particular generation, it tends to be broadly distributed. This is a type often belonging to the 'middle range' in name statistics, and it is characterized by not being concentrated in a specific generation like the most popular names.
Distribution of namesakes by field
- Film, video, and culture/arts: There are people active as production staff in directing, cinematography, art, music, etc., as well as actors and voice actors. As the production workforce in the Korean film and drama industry is large, the same name frequently appears in credits.
- Games and IT: There are workers active in job categories such as game planning, programming, art, and operations, and this name can be found in developer communities or project credits.
- Academia and education: Cases of serving as university professors, researchers, teachers, etc. are reported. Namesakes appear in paper author names or academic conference rosters, and distinguishing them requires indicating their affiliated institution together.
- Public, legal, and administrative fields: There are people active as public officials, legal professionals, public institution employees, etc. In this case, position and affiliation are key clues for identification.
- Sports and others: The same name is used in various fields such as athletes, coaches, businesspeople, and writers.
Points to note when identifying namesakes
Korean personal names are difficult to pin down to an individual by surname and given name alone. Because there can be dozens to hundreds of people with the same name, when searching for 'Park Hae-young' on wikis, encyclopedias, news, etc., one must check at least one of the following together: ① field of activity, ② affiliated institution/company, ③ year of birth or period of activity, ④ representative works/achievements. In particular, because search engine results easily mix information about different people, it is recommended to first check primary sources (official profiles, institutional announcements, work credits).
Recent trends
As of 2024–2025, the way personal name information is circulated is itself changing significantly. First, as generative AI and search summarization features have become widespread, the problem of 'person mis-merging,' in which information about namesakes is incorrectly combined into one person, has emerged as a social issue. Second, as ending credits for films, dramas, games, etc. are systematically accumulated in online databases (IMDb, KMDb, wikis, official game pages, etc.), tracking the careers of production staff has become easier than before. Third, as awareness of personal information protection has strengthened, disclosure of private information beyond official profiles is being suppressed, and in wiki editing, too, unsourced descriptions of people are increasingly deleted. These environmental changes further highlight the importance of neutral description and clear source citation when editing common personal name entries such as 'Park Hae-young.'
Related topics
- [[Personal name]]
- [[Korean surnames]]
- [[Namesake]]
- [[Park (surname)]]
- [[Cinema of Korea]]
- [[Game developer]]