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Wikimedia Korea
Wikimedia Korea Strategic Annual Plan 2025
01 January 2025 - 31 December 2025
Report ID: 11887
Report status: Accepted
Report due date: 28 February 2026
Grant ID: G-GS-2409-16926
Amount funded: 164396000 KRW, 122724 USD
Amount spent: 135358431 KRW
Final Learning Report for General Support Fund
Wikimedia Affiliate Report for Wikimedia Affiliates
Affiliate Health Criteria navigation for Wikimedia Affiliates

Part 1: Understanding your work

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Per the recent update on the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy process, Wikimedia Affiliates that are General Support Fund grantees will fulfill their affiliate reporting requirements through their final or yearly grantee report.

If you are a Wikimedia Affiliate, you will use this form for your affiliate reporting and to address the affiliate health criteria. You do not need to submit a separate report to AffCom. Follow the guidance in the green boxes to report on how you met the corresponding affiliate health criteria.

If you are not a Wikimedia Affiliate, aligning your responses with the affiliate criteria is optional and not required.

1. Please share to what extent your programs, approaches, and strategies contributed to addressing the challenges you shared in your proposal. If they did not contribute as you believed they would, please share what obstacles you faced and what, if anything, you learned from them? (required)

For affiliates, use this space (Question 1.) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 1.1 (Goal delivery). Describe how you actively delivered on mission goals, e.g. content creation.

Based on our strategic plan and activities in 2025, the programs and strategies implemented by Wikimedia Korea have shown significant success in specific areas like neurodivergent people engagement and sister project activation, while facing persistent obstacles in gender diversity and youth engagement.

  • Neurodivergent people engagement: The model established in 2024 was successfully extended in 2025. The number of events increased significantly to 17 (9 editathons, 6 photowalks, and 1 workshp), expanding the geographical reach from the Seoul metropolitan area to cities like Wonju, Osan, and Bucheon. This approach successfully facilitated social participation of neurodivergent individuals in the Wikimedia movement. 
  • Wikisource Activation: We saw a significant in voluntary activities on Korean Wikisource.  Contributions surged from 21 articles by 28 participants in 2024 to 117 articles by 69 participants in 2025. We maintained a partnership with National Library of Korea, and enthusiastic community members organized voluntary events. Technological Response to AI: To address a changing online environment, we supported the development of generative AI-powered tool, WikiValut. It helps Korean Wikipedia uses translate English Wikipedia articles into Korean, and create article drafts very fast and conveniently.
  • International Cooperation: The strategy to strengthen regional ties resulted in inviting Japanese and ESEAP Hub representatives to WikiConference Seoul 2025, leading to concrete proposals for future joint editathons and photowalks. Furthermore, Korea was selected to host the 2028 ESEAP Conference.

However, some plans were not implemented as expected, revealing specific obstacles:

  • Women and Youth Participation: We hosted some photowalk events targeting neurodivergent women, but the participation was less  successful than we expected. We also decided to hold our activity for teenagers for their sustainable engagement. 
  • Wikidata Engagement: Despite our efforts to improve Korean content on Wikidata, actual participation remained very low (only 3 participants in 2025). We think it is because of a lack of clear incentives or motivation for users to contribute to Wikidata. 
  • Voluntary Community Activity: There was a decline in user-led editathons on Wikipedia, dropping from 5 in 2024 to 2 in 2025. Providing financial support alone is insufficient; the organization realized the need for human support (advising on organization, souvenir logistics) and stronger motivational drivers to sustain voluntary activities.
  • Generative AI Side Effects: While AI-powered tools like WikiVault increased productivity, they also brought risks of misinformation and tool misuse to Korean Wikipedia. It is crucial to monitor usage patterns and collect community feedback to implement technical regulations to minimize side effects.

2. Is there a plan to build on the key successes you had? If yes, please describe the plan and if no, please share the limitations to do so. For instance, did the activities lead to any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future? (required)

Yes, there is a clear plan to build on the key successes achieved in 2024 and 2025. 

  • The "Infinity Project" for neurodivergent individuals has been one of the most significant successes. We aim to move beyond hosting events for neurodivergent people to planing events targeting both neurodivergent people and neurotypical editors and activating the Neurodiversity Wikiproject on Korean Wikipedia to better support their long-term settlement in the community.
  • We saw successes in international cooperation, such as the Korea-Malaysia exchange and the participation of Japanese delegates in WikiConference Seoul 2025, and they motivated our more active participation in the ESEAP community.  We are planing to host the 2028 ESEAP Conference in Korea**, There is also a specific initiative to regularize cooperation with the Japanese and Taiwanese communities through joint photowalks and editathons.
  • As a result of the successful development and introduction of the WikiVault, we have created a new technological roadmap. Rather than just providing the tool, the new priority is to create official manuals for generative AI use and establish community-led technical regulations to minimize side effects like misuse and misinformation. We will also support the technical community for the improvement of Korean Wikipedia's productivity.

3. Please provide a link to reports that detail the activities that took place in the last year. This can include an annual report, Meta pages, and websites. If there are no links available, briefly describe the implemented activities and programs below or upload any files. (required)

For affiliates, use this space (Question 3.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.1 (Affiliate health & resilience), 4.1 (Internal engagement), 4.2 (Community connection), and 4.3 (Partnerships and collaboration):

  • Describe your activities engaging new users, new members for your decision-making body(ies), and developing leaders and organizers (2.1).
  • Describe your activities creating or hosting spaces to encourage greater collaboration and engagement among your members (4.1).
  • Describe how you engage with the contributing community that you serve and/or support (4.2).
  • Describe your partnerships with other affiliates or with non-Wikimedia entities (4.3).

We have created and improved manuals and guidelines on Korean Wikipedia projects to facilitate a seamless onboarding process. This year, we updated the Korean Wikisource manuals, improving the quality and accessibility of the platform's guidance. For retention of new comers, we have hosted follow-up events, regularly. For example, we held an offline event for neurodivergent people every month, and we successfully maintained approximately 10 participants in the event. We also worked to turn enthusiastic participants into our paid members, and some of them joined our organization. We laughed specialized group chats to facilitate rapid communication and resource sharing among organizers. A history-theme group chat is very active, and small offline events were hosted frequently. 

We have rented our physical office since last year for sustainability of collaboration engagement among your members. We launched our activities for neurodivergent people in collaboration with our paid member, and we hosted follow-up events in our office. It was very helpful, because we didn't need to put an effort to find a venue, and participants could remember the venue location. We also hosted regular strategy and evaluation meetings to engage our members in our activities. 

This year, we focus on providing the Korean Wikimedia community with convenient tools to improve their productivity. We financially support the development of a AI-powered tool, and it contributed to the improvement of Korean Wikipedia's productivity. We distributed manuals on the tool through our news letter. Because some users were concerned about side effects of the tool, we collected opinions of Korean Wikipedia users and imposed technical regulation on it.

We actively built partnerships with affiliates in the ESEAP region. For example, we co-hosted an online editathon event with Wikimedia Malaysia, and it was very successful. We can see a Malaysian participant's report on Diff at [1] . We invited two Japanese users to Seoul to maintain our partnership with them, and talk about future collaboration. We can see a Japanese attendee's report on Diff at [2] .

We regularly publish our news letters on Korean Wikipedia.

We continuously posted our articles on Diff. 


4. Are you interested in sharing what you achieved or learned this year with the wider community through different peer learning programs (e.g. Let's Connect program, Diff)? (optional)


5. Did you collect feedback from your community or target groups on how the activities implemented impacted them? If yes, please attach/provide information on the results (e.g. community surveys, stories, impact booklets/reports, interviews with partner institutions, etc). Did you collect other impact-specific data? (required)

For affiliates, the response to Question 5. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criteria 4.1 (Internal Engagement), 4.2 (Community Connection), or 4.3 (Partnerships & collaboration), where applicable.

We, we collected feedback from our community members, paid members, and event participants. 

We regularly hosted offline events to survey opinions of community members. This year, the event attendees talked about the impact of the WikiVault, and solutions to side effects of the tool. As a results of the event, we held an online event to improve the quality of articles created by the tool.

We also invited our paid members to our regular offline events to discuss and evaluate our activities. We hosted an event to talk about our annual strategy on May, and a discussion event to assess the result of our activities in early-2026. 

We collected opinions of event participants after events for neurodivergent people finished, and attached them to our Diff articles:

Some participants of our international events shared their reports through Diff:

6. During the fund period, did your efforts do any of the following? (required):

For affiliates, the response to Question 6. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criterion 2.2 (Diversity balance).

  • 6.1 Bring in participants from the following groups: people with disabilities, neurodiverse people, underrepresented geographical regions (ESEAP, LATAM, SSA, MENA, SA)
  • 6.2 Develop content about the following underrepresented topics or groups of people: people with disabilities, neurodiverse people, underrepresented geographical regions (ESEAP, LATAM, SSA, MENA, SA)
  • 6.3 Support the retention of: Editors, Partnerships

7. What, if any, effective tactics or approaches can you share that worked well when dealing with the programs under points 6.1-6.3 that you selected? (optional)

Just after founding the organization, our partnerships to support minorities were limited to one-off events. We struggled to maintain long-term collaborations and retention of participants.

To overcome these issues and ensure sustainable partnerships, we established the following strategies:

  • We hired a neurodivergent part-time manager as a liaison between us and neurodivergent groups. This strategy was successfully, and it helped us to continuously promote our events to the neurodivergent groups, and encourage them to attend follow-up events.
  • We rented a dedicated office to host events, making it easier for past participants to return.
  • By holding monthly edit-a-thons, we successfully encouraged previous attendees to return and engage in other activities.

8. If you developed partnerships, which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors (optional):

Permanent staff outreach, Volunteers from our communities

Part 2: Metrics

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9. Wikimedia Metrics: Participants, editors, organizers.
Metrics name Target Result Comments and tools used
Number of all participants 600 449 manual
Number of all editors 450 323
Number of new editors N/A
Number of retained editors N/A
Number of all organizers N/A
Number of new organizers N/A
10. Wikimedia Metrics: Contributions to Wikimedia Projects
Wikimedia project Target - Number of created pages Target - Number of improved pages Result - Number of created pages Result - Number of improved pages
Wikipedia 500 600 859
Wikimedia Commons 500 1023
Wikidata 100 100 111
Wiktionary
Wikisource 50 117
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia

Tool used and comments (optional):

We manually counted the results and din't separate created and improved articles.

11. Did you set other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): No

11.1. Other Metrics.

In your application, you outlined some other open metrics that you would like to measure. Please fill out the achieved results for each of the open metrics you defined.

Other Metrics name Metrics Description Target Result Tools and comments
Number of volunteer hours Volunteer hours awarded to volunteers through a government-run platform 600
Diversity of participants brought in The number of women, disables or LGBT participants 100
Voluntary events Online/offline events that users host voluntarily with WMKR's support 10

Part 3: Skill Development / Capacity Building

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12. Reflecting on your programmatic (external) and organizational (internal) work, did your grant support you to undergo any skill development that made a difference to your success? If yes, what skill was developed, and how did it lead to success? (e.g. received coaching on public speaking, attended training on nonviolent communication, hosted professional development conversations on leadership, learned and used a new tool for project management, etc.)? Can you share any materials? (required)

For affiliates, use this space (Question 12.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.2 (Diversity balance) and 3.1 (Diverse, Skilled, and Accountable Leadership):

  • Describe actions taken to prioritize gender balance in affiliate leadership, as well as any areas of diversity relevant to your affiliate's context (2.2).
  • Describe the management, financial, or other leadership skills of your affiliate leaders. If you have a succession plan, please include it here (3.1).
  • Describe any training or skill development (as outlined in the question above) (3.1).
  • Incorporate into the annual report a disclosure of conflict of interests (if any) from the leadership (3.1).

We are keeping gender balance in leadership by hiring women. We have four employees, and three of them are women. We have eight board members, and one of them is female. 

Our leaders have various skills in management, finance and other leadership. For example,  our executive officer majored in business management, and law. One of our employees is leading her own non-profit organization. 

Through the grant support, we have enhanced our capacity to support the technical community and improved our communication with the community.

  • By supporting the development of 'WikiVault,' we were able to strengthen our capabilities in aiding the technical community. Furthermore, we learned skills to develop tools using AI and Python, and we plan to distribute our tools for more productive editing on Wikidata and Wikimeida Commons.
  • By hiring an exclusive manager, we established an administrative framework to systematically manage neurodiversity projects such as the 'Infinity Project'. This foundation became the cornerstone for successfully expanding our initiatives nationwide, reaching beyond the Seoul metropolitan area.

13. What is one capacity/skill area that you would like to focus on for the next year? And how do you plan to achieve this capacity? (required)

Next year, we would like to focus on the improvement of organizational and administrative management, and strengthen network between our paid members and community members. We believe that continuous engagement of the paid members and community members is crucial for sustainable Wikimedia movement in Korea. To achieve that, we plan to employ an experienced manager in charge of the job. 

14. If you have additional information or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. Use the space below to upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your report.

For affiliates, also use this section (Question 14) to fulfill the Affiliate Health Criteria requirements.

  • Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for affiliate governance, including affiliate leadership and membership with a breakdown of the demographics; how elections are conducted; how conflicts of interest are declared; and how decisions are made and communicated (2.2, 2.3, 3.1).
  • Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for activities incorporating, promoting awareness about, or enforcing the Universal Code of Conduct in your affiliate's activities (3.3).
  • Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for internal membership engagement, such as notes from your regular meetings and how you communicate to or involve your membership (4.1).

We notified our governance and elections through our Korean Wikipedia project page and newsletter. We explain how our governance is structured in the below document. We also shared our bylaw on Korean Wikipedia and explained how our elections are conducted. 

We announced we comply with the Universal Code of Conduct when we hosted offline events. 

We described our internal membership including member's rights and obligations and membership application on Korean Wikipedia.

We shared notes from our regular meetings, such as general and evaluation meetings. 


Part 4: Financial reporting

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For affiliates, also use this section (Part 4: Financial reporting) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 3.2 (Financial & Legal Compliance).

Budget overview
Description Planned / received budget for this category (KRW) Amount spent (KRW)
Personnel costs 116100000 93151721
Operational costs 15196000 21340730
Programmatic costs 33100000 20865980
Total General Support Fund 164396000 135358431
Other revenue 17727536 0
Remaining funds from General Support Fund 29037569

15. Please state the total amount spent from this fund in your local currency. (required)

135358431 KRW

16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency.  (required)

  • Operational costs: 21340730 KRW
  • Programmatic costs: 20865980 KRW
  • Staff and contractor costs: 93151721 KRW

17. Did you have any other revenue sources (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): Yes

  • 17.1. Provide the total amount received from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 17727536 KRW
  • 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 0 KRW

18. Provide a financial report document which will provide the details of funds received and spent in the currency of your fund. (required)

  • Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
  • Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O8vSnH64VZssXZKzDtk3IfETYXcR1F0EcE5GxvXFVq0/edit?usp=sharing

18.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)

N/A

19. Do you have any unspent funds from this funding?: Yes

19.1. Please list the amount of unspent funds in your local currency. (required)
29037569
19.2.  Explain why you did not use the amount. (required)
We hired a replacement late last year for one employee who left earlier in the year.
19.3. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
B. Propose to use them to partially or fully fund a new/future request with PO approval
19.4. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
We will deduct the remaining funds from the next funds.

20. Final confirmations (required)

  • 20.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement? You must be in compliance with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement. In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the Wikimedia Foundation mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
Yes
  • 20.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
  • 20.3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
Yes

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