Status: Live
Effective: Dec 26, 2025 (KST)
We are excited to announce a major upgrade to the KOBDi Business Search. This release transforms the search bar into a sophisticated identification engine, designed to solve the single biggest challenge in interacting with the Korean market: Ambiguity.
In Korea, relying on a company name alone is rarely enough. Dozens of unrelated businesses often share the exact same Korean name. Furthermore, the English name you see on a business card or website often differs from the one listed on the Business Registration Certificate—if it’s listed at all, as English names are optional and not considered official legal identifiers in Korea. Learn more How Business Naming Works in South Korea.
This creates a gap between the company you know and the official data you need. Our updated search engine bridges this gap, allowing you to use fragmented details to identify the correct legal entity with precision.
The Identification Toolkit: Reverse Lookup
We have expanded the search capabilities to support a wider range of data points. When a “Business Name” search yields too many results, you can now use secondary clues to find your target:
- CEO Name: Distinguish between identical company names by filtering for leadership.
- Contact Points: Have a phone or fax number from an invoice? Enter it to reverse-lookup the company that owns the line.
- Digital Footprint: Search by Website URL to find the legal entity behind a domain, or by Email Address (Members only) to trace communications back to a registered business.
- Flexible ID Search: Whether you have a Business Registration Number (BRN) or Corporate Registration Number (CRN), simply type the digits. Our system automatically handles the formatting, with or without hyphens.
Smarter Matching Across All Fields
Whether you are searching by Business Name, CEO Name, or Phone number, our new matching engine adapts to your needs. We provide three distinct methods that apply to every text field:
- Smart Match (Default): This is our “fuzzy” logic engine. It is designed to find your target even if the name on the invoice differs slightly from the official registry. It accounts for spelling variations, transliterations, and partial matches to ensure you don’t miss a candidate.
- Exact Match: Use this when precision is paramount. If you need to filter out subsidiaries or similarly named competitors and find only the specific entity you typed, this mode returns 100% matches.
- Starts With: Ideal for exploration. Enter a keyword (e.g., “Samsung”) to see an alphabetical list of all entities beginning with that phrase.
Power User Logic: Stack Your Conditions
Sometimes, one clue isn’t enough. We have introduced Multi-Condition Logic, allowing you to stack search criteria using AND/OR operators to triangulate your target.
- Guest Users: Can combine up to 2 conditions (e.g., Name includes “Tech” AND CEO includes “Kim”).
- Registered Members: Can stack up to 5 different conditions in a single query. This allows for deep, forensic searches—narrowing millions of companies down to the exact one that matches the Name, CEO, Phone, and Region you are looking for.
Instant Market Feedback
To help you gauge the scope of your search, we’ve added Total Market Visibility. The search results now display the exact total number of businesses found (e.g., “4,240 results”). This immediate feedback tells you if your search is too broad, prompting you to add another condition to narrow the list down to a manageable few.
Unlocked Access for Members
We believe verification should be accessible, which is why Guest Users can use these powerful tools immediately, with a transparent real-time counter tracking their daily free searches.
However, for professionals requiring deep research, Registered Members enjoy a premium experience:
- Unlimited Daily Searches: Run as many queries as needed to verify your partners.
- Advanced Logic: Stack up to 5 search conditions.
- Unmasked Data: View full, unredacted business intelligence instantly.
Why this matters
In cross-border business, you rarely have the full picture at the start. You might have a “trading name” that doesn’t exist in official records, or a common name shared by fifty other companies. This update empowers you to take whatever information you have—a website, a phone number, or a partial name—and use it to identify, verify, and confirm the correct Korean partner with confidence.