Three ideas unlock any Korean family tree: bon-gwan, pa, and hangnyeol. Here is what they mean.
The bon-gwan is the ancestral home region of a clan's founder. Two people with the same surname but different bon-gwan belong to different lineages β e.g. Gimhae Kim and Gyeongju Kim are distinct clans.
A pa is a major branch within one bon-gwan, splitting off from a prominent ancestor as descendants multiply. Knowing your pa helps you locate your line within the jokbo quickly.
Hangnyeol is a system where everyone of the same generation shares a character in their given name (the dollimja). A clan's hangnyeol chart assigns a set character per generation, often cycling through the five elements. From the shared character alone, you can tell whether someone is an elder or a junior generation.
On JokboWorld, enter each person's bon-gwan and branch, link parents and children, and generations arrange automatically β far faster than drawing by hand.
The surname is the family name; the bon-gwan is the ancestral region the clan's founder came from. Same surname + different bon-gwan means a different lineage.
A shared given-name character used by everyone of the same generation, so you can identify generational rank from the name.