.한국
.한국 is the IDN ccTLD for South Korea. It is managed by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA).[1]
The domain at the DNS root level is “한국”. This is represented in ASCII-compatible encoding according to the IDNA specification as “xn--3e0b707e”. The individual Unicode code points that comprise this string are U+D55C U+AD6D.
In Korean language, the string has a meaning equivalent to “Korea” in English. Its pronunciation in English is transliterated as “Hanguk”. The string is expressed using the Hangul script.[2]
Delegation History
In May 2010, an application was made to the "IDN Fast Track" process to have the string “한국” recongised as representing the Republic of Korea. The request was supported by the Korea Communications Commission, and supported by the outcome of a consultation process conducted with various Internet community groups.
On 16 June 2010, review by the IDN Fast Track DNS Stability Panel found that "the applied-for strings associated with the applications from [the Republic of Korea] (a) present none of the threats to the stability or security of the DNS ... and (b) present an acceptable low risk of user confusion". The request for the string to represent the Republic of Korea was subsequently approved.
On 30 September 2010, KISA commenced a request to ICANN for delegation of ".한국" as a top-level domain.[2] The .한국 domain was approved through the IDN Fast Track process,[3] and delegated to KRNIC in 2011.[2]
Rules and Restrictions
As .kr, any individual, company or organization must have a postal address in South Korea.[4] Registrations are only available at the top-level.[5]
Characters
The requirements for hankuk domains are as follows:
- letters of the Hanguel (Korean character ,11,172), alphabet [A to Z] or [a to z], numbers [0 to 9], and hyphens are available for use for domain names. More than 1 hanguel must be included in;
- a domain name shall contain a minimum of 1 characters and a maximum of 17 characters;
- a domain name shall not begin or end with a hyphen;
- consecutive hyphens are not allowed between the third and the fourth characters.[4]