Naver's AI translation engine built for Korean. When Korean users type 파파고 (pa-pa-go) on a QWERTY keyboard still set to English, the keys produce vkvkrh. This page explains the mapping and how to make the most of Papago as a Korean user.
On the standard Korean 두벌식 (2-set) layout, typing while the input is still in English mode maps each Korean character to a specific QWERTY key. The Korean name 파파고 is typed as these keys:
Put together: 파파고 typed in English mode spells vkvkrh. Korean users searching for Papago who forget to press the 한/영 key first land on this search term — and Google's intent matching now routes many of these searches to Papago results.
Papago is Naver's neural machine translation service, optimised specifically for Korean language pairs. It supports translation between Korean and 15 languages, with Korean–English, Korean–Japanese, and Korean–Chinese being particularly strong. The mobile app includes camera translation (point your phone at text to translate it), voice translation, and conversation mode for real-time bilingual dialogue.
Papago is the dominant translation tool in Korea, installed on most Korean smartphones. While ChatGPT and DeepL have gained ground for nuanced or long-form translation, Papago remains the fastest choice for quick everyday translation and is tightly integrated into Naver's ecosystem. It handles Korean internet slang, idioms, and honorific structures (존댓말/반말) with nuance that generic models miss.