Laravel localization in Korean 한국어

Locale codes

Set the base locale in config/app.php. For regional variants, Korean commonly uses: ko_KR

// config/app.php
'locale' => 'ko',
'fallback_locale' => 'en',

// Or switch at runtime
App::setLocale('ko');

Plural rules: what Korean actually needs

CLDR defines 1 cardinal category for Korean. The sample numbers below were computed by ICU for this exact locale:

Laravel's trans_choice() maps numbers to 1 pipe-separated form for this locale:

// lang/ko/messages.php
'items' => ':count'

// Usage
trans_choice('messages.items', $count, ['count' => $count]);

This language has no grammatical plural, so a single form covers every number.

Try any number live in the pluralization tester.

Localized dates with Carbon

Real output for Korean (ko locale), generated by Carbon for March 21, 2026:

$date = now()->locale('ko');

$date->translatedFormat('l, j F Y');
// "토요일, 21 3월 2026"

$date->isoFormat('LLLL');
// "2026년 3월 21일 토요일 오후 2:30"

$date->isoFormat('L');
// "2026.03.21."

$date->subDays(3)->diffForHumans();
// "3개월 전"

What to watch out for in Korean

• Honorific speech levels are grammatical; the polite -요/-습니다 styles are standard for UI copy.
• Particles change form depending on whether the preceding word ends in a consonant or vowel (은/는, 이/가), so appending them to placeholders breaks grammar.
• Subject-object-verb word order; no grammatical gender or plural agreement.
• Dates are written year-first (2026년 3월 1일).

Framework strings already translated

Laravel's own validation, auth and pagination strings are maintained in Korean by the open-source Laravel-Lang project (MIT). Install them, then manage your app's own strings live:

composer require laravel-lang/common --dev
php artisan lang:add ko
php artisan lang:update