Wikipedia:WikiProject Korea/Image guide

This page is a resource list and guide for working with images on WikiProject Korea!

Please upload your photos of Korea to Commons! Even seemingly mundane photos can end up being helpful years later.

Copyright

• Make sure you consult Commons:Licensing and Commons:Copyright rules by territory/South Korea. Also relevant: rules for North Korea and for Japan.
  • At present, the Korea Open Government License Type 1 is permissible to use (but on thin ice).
• For photos of South Korea, in general you should expect to abide by both South Korean and American copyright law in order for a photo to be suitable for Commons.
• See the various South Korea public domain tags.
  • Note PD-South Korea-photo-1977. This license is particularly generous: it means that most (with some caveats) photos published in non-scholarly works like newspapers before 1977 are copyright free in both South Korea and the US.
  • Note PD-Korea-1910-1945. Most photos published during the colonial period (with caveats) are copyright free. Make sure you abide by Japanese, South Korean, and American copyright law.
• Note that because South Korea doesn't have freedom of panorama, you generally cannot upload pictures of recent statues and buildings to Commons.
• If there's a copyrighted photo you'd like to use, consider asking the copyright holder if they're willing to allow its use. See Commons:Volunteer Response Team for more on this process. Example of a success case.

Places to find images

• Flickr (about) has images searchable by copyright license. If a good photo is under a restricted license, consider messaging the uploader and asking if they're willing to change the license. This works surprisingly often.
• GongU Madang (about) is a search engine by the Korea Copyright Commission that has pictures searchable by copyright license.
• The Korea Open Government License Website (about) has pictures searchable by license. Press "상세 검색", then "제1유형" when searching. Other number licenses are not acceptable for Wikipedia.
• Naver Newspaper Library has scans of historic newspapers available for free. Many photos within published before 1977 are copyright-free.
• The Seoul Tourism Website has recent photos of Seoul landmarks under the KOGL license.
• The National Folk Museum of Korea (about) website has historical images that are out of copyright.
• The Seoul Research Data Service has photos of Seoul from the past few decades to present
• The Archives of Korean History. Broad coverage of Korean history. Also has digitized many pictures from the US National Archives that the US hasn't digitized yet.
• The US National Archives (about) has many pictures and videos of Korea, mostly from around 1945 onwards.
• The National Archives of Korea (about) is an excellent place to search for post-1900 historical photos/documents for users who know Korean.
• eMuseum has many images of historical things, often under KOGL licenses or the underlying materials are copyright free.
• The Seoul History Archives (about) has images, mostly about Seoul (but not exclusively).
• Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies has images of pre-modern historical relics that should be copyright free
• Archive.org (about) has scans of old, copyright-free books with pictures of Korea by people such as Homer Hulbert (example). A number of early people in these categories have books on Archive.org: Category:Koreanists and Category:Christian missionaries in Korea.
• The Korean Newspaper Archive (about) has scans of many 20th century newspapers in Korea.
• The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture (about) often has pictures under the KOGL, but they're usually 20+ years old. Image metadata sometimes has info about when photos were possibly taken.
• The War Memorial of Korea Open Archives has many pre-modern works that will be out of copyright, as well as recent works that are released under KOGL.
• The National Diet Library of Japan (about) has many old books and photos about Korea from the Korean Empire and colonial periods.
• The National Assembly Library (about) has scans of government documents and books, many of which have photos and are published before 1977.