The only located Korean study measured 9.6 cm stretched in 123 conscripts. The 10.8 cm on the map does not come from it, or from any other study we can find. South Korea sits second from bottom on the claimed ranking on the strength of a number with no traceable source.
What the internet claims
10.8cm
labelled erect
The compilation behind the viral maps
D
vs
What was measured
9.60cm
stretched, 123 men
Son et al., Asian J Androl, 2003
The claim runs 1.20 cm above the measurement, and the two do not measure the same thing: the claim says erect, the study measured stretched. There is no accepted way to convert between them.
What was actually measured in South Korea?
Son 2003 is a small study of a narrow population: 123 men, conscripts, measured flaccid and stretched. Conscript samples are young, which cuts both ways. They avoid the age decline that muddies clinic samples, and they represent one narrow band of a country rather than its adult male population.
There is better Korean data in the literature index and we have not been able to read it. Belladelli 2023 lists three Korean studies this register does not hold: Choi 2011, 144 men measured under anaesthesia; Park 2011, 309 volunteers measured erect; and Kim 2019, 342 men. Park 2011 is the interesting one, because national erect measurements are rare enough to count on two hands, and 309 men measured erect would immediately become the best Korean source available.
Until that full text is in hand, the honest position is the one this page takes: the located Korean figure is 9.6 cm stretched from 123 conscripts, the claimed figure of 10.8 cm has no located source, and there is a study out there that would probably settle it. Saying so is more useful than picking one.
How does that compare with the rest of the world?
The claim puts South Korea 116th of 119 countries on the ranked list. Here is that number set against the figures that come with a method attached.
Figure
cm
What it is
The claim for South Korea
10.80
Labelled erect. No method, no sample size, no reference.
Son et al., Asian J Androl
9.60
stretched, 123 men, 2003. The best located
measurement in South Korea.
Clinically measured worldwide
13.12
Erect, 15,521 men. Veale 2015, the pooled clinical figure.
Pooled worldwide
13.93
Erect, 55,761 men. Belladelli 2023, 75 studies.
Pooled for Asia
11.74
Erect, 95 % confidence interval
10.18–13.29 cm
. Belladelli 2023.
That last interval is 3.11 cm wide,
for a whole continent, from the largest meta-analysis there is. The claimed map it sits
under spreads all 119 countries across
7.9 cm and prints every
country to one decimal place. Read those two sentences together and you have the
entire problem with penis size by country.
How many men does the claim cover?
123 measured → 21,000,000 described
123 men in South Korea appear in the studies this register could locate. The claimed figure is applied to roughly 21,000,000 adult men: one measured man for every 170,732.
Where would you land in South Korea?
Against the claimed figure, because that is the number people mean when they ask. It
is the weaker of the two numbers above, and the calculator says so. Everything is
computed in your browser and nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere.
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1,350,250,000men smaller
1,350,240,000men larger
50 of 100 men worldwide are larger than you.
L 13.6 cm
Estimated from the claimed world mean of 13.6 cm across ≈ 2,700,490,000 adult
men in 119 countries. You beat the claimed mean in 31 of them. The
claims are the internet's, not ours; we are grading them one by one.
See the audit.
What should you take from this?
South Korea near the bottom of the ranking is doing a lot of work in a lot of internet arguments, and it rests on 123 conscripts measured on a different scale from the one the map claims, plus a figure nobody can trace.
If you have access to Park 2011 or the other two Korean series, the about page says where to send them and this entry gets regraded.
Nearby in the register
The nearest countries with an entry of their own here.
Nearer still, and with nothing to show: North Korea, Mongolia, Philippines. Those
countries carry a claimed figure on every map and no located study behind it, so they
have no page here. The method page lists all of them.
Sources for this page
Son et al., Asian J Androl, 2003, n = 123. Clinician-measured, flaccid and stretched.
Veale D et al. Am I normal? BJU International 2015; 115(6): 978–986. The pooled
clinical figures used throughout this site.
Belladelli F et al. Worldwide Temporal Trends in Penile Length. World J Mens Health
2023; 41(4). The regional pooled figures and confidence intervals.
The full reference list, the grading scheme and all 119 claims are on the
method and sources page.