mecab-ko
Python wrapper for the MeCab-ko morphological analyzer for Korean
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes, if you need Korean morphological analysis. The package is mature, has no known vulnerabilities, uses a permissive license, and benefits from well-maintained upstream projects. Install friction is moderate but manageable with prebuilt wheels. Maintenance is aging (last release 325 days ago), so verify that the version and dictionary meet your needs before committing to production use. Not suitable if you need active, frequent updates or support for other languages.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Windows requires Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable.
- macOS Big Sur requires pip 20.3 or higher.
- mecab-ko-dic dictionary is automatically installed as a runtime dependency.
License · maintenance · safety
BSD (permissive) — Distributed under permissive BSD license, allowing commercial and private use with minimal restrictions. Dual-licensed under GPL v2 and LGPL v2.1 as alternatives.
last release 2025-09-23 (325 days) · last repo commit 2025-09-23 · 25 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 135,490 downloads/mo, #11,429 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install mecab-ko
import mecab_ko as MeCab
tagger = MeCab.Tagger("-Owakati")
result = tagger.parse("아버지가방에들어가신다").split()
print(result) # ['아버지', '가', '방', '에', '들어가', '신다']- Whether the package works reliably with Python 3.6 and 3.7 despite wheel evidence only showing 3.8–3.13 support
- Current maintenance cadence and likelihood of future updates beyond the aging status indicator
What it is and what it does
mecab-ko is a Python binding for MeCab-ko, a morphological analyzer designed specifically for Korean text. It breaks Korean sentences into morphemes (the smallest meaningful units) and assigns part-of-speech tags to each token. The package ships with precompiled wheels for macOS, Linux, and Windows, and automatically installs mecab-ko-dic, a Korean dictionary required for analysis.
The wrapper follows MeCab's own API closely rather than adopting Pythonic conventions, so it reads like a direct port. You instantiate a Tagger with optional command-line arguments (e.g., "-Owakati" for space-separated output), then call parse() on Korean text to get morphological breakdowns. It's commonly used in Korean NLP pipelines, text preprocessing, and linguistic research where accurate Korean tokenization is essential.
Use it for
- Tokenize and tag Korean text for downstream NLP tasks like sentiment analysis or named-entity recognition
- Build Korean search engines or text indexing systems that require morpheme-level analysis
- Preprocess Korean corpora for machine learning or linguistic research
- Segment Korean text into words when space-delimited boundaries are ambiguous or absent
- Extract lemmas and part-of-speech information for Korean language learning or grammar analysis tools
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes, if you need Korean morphological analysis.
The package is mature, has no known vulnerabilities, uses a permissive license, and benefits from well-maintained upstream projects. Install friction is moderate but manageable with prebuilt wheels. Maintenance is aging (last release 325 days ago), so verify that the version and dictionary meet your needs before committing to production use. Not suitable if you need active, frequent updates or support for other languages.
Install
mecab-ko on PyPI
Before you install
Medium install friction due to compiled wheels for multiple platforms and architectures. Maintenance is aging—last release was 325 days ago, though the repository remains active with recent commits. Windows users must install Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable separately.
Windows requires Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable. macOS Big Sur requires pip 20.3 or higher. mecab-ko-dic dictionary is automatically installed as a runtime dependency.
License in practice
Distributed under permissive BSD license, allowing commercial and private use with minimal restrictions. Dual-licensed under GPL v2 and LGPL v2.1 as alternatives.
Quickstart
pip install mecab-ko
import mecab_ko as MeCab
tagger = MeCab.Tagger("-Owakati")
result = tagger.parse("아버지가방에들어가신다").split()
print(result) # ['아버지', '가', '방', '에', '들어가', '신다']Verify before relying
- Whether the package works reliably with Python 3.6 and 3.7 despite wheel evidence only showing 3.8–3.13 support
- Current maintenance cadence and likelihood of future updates beyond the aging status indicator
Package facts
| License | BSD permissive |
| Python support | Not specified |
| Install friction | Medium. Platform-specific wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 1 packagemecab-ko-dic |
| Maintenance | Aging 325 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 135,490 / month, #11,429 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 6 - MatureIntended Audience :: DevelopersIntended Audience :: Science/ResearchLicense :: OSI Approved :: BSD LicenseNatural Language :: KoreanProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python ModulesTopic :: Text Processing :: Linguistic |
Evidence: mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp310-cp310-macosx_10_9_universal2.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp310-cp310-macosx_10_9_x86_64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp310-cp310-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp310-cp310-manylinux2014_aarch64.manylinux_2_17_aarch64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp310-cp310-manylinux2014_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp310-cp310-win_amd64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp311-cp311-macosx_10_9_universal2.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp311-cp311-macosx_10_9_x86_64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp311-cp311-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp311-cp311-manylinux2014_aarch64.manylinux_2_17_aarch64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp311-cp311-manylinux2014_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp311-cp311-win_amd64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp312-cp312-macosx_10_13_universal2.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp312-cp312-macosx_10_13_x86_64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp312-cp312-manylinux2014_aarch64.manylinux_2_17_aarch64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp312-cp312-manylinux2014_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp312-cp312-win_amd64.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp313-cp313-macosx_10_13_universal2.whl; mecab_ko-1.0.2-cp313-cp313-macosx_10_13_x86_64.whl
Tags
Let your AI agent find packages like this
Example. Real query, live index.
You found this page by searching. An agent finds it by wishing: SkillFed indexes 14,416 PyPI packages by what they can do, searchable in plain language.
wish › “mecab-ko python wrapper”
- mecab-koPython wrapper for MeCab-ko, a morphological analyzer that tokenizes…
- python-mecab-ko-dicProvides a pre-built Korean morphological analyzer dictionary for…
- python-mecab-koProvides Python bindings for MeCab-ko, a morphological analyzer for…
Give your agent the search over MCP, or paste the wish link into any chat.
More Python Modules packages
Converts domain names between Unicode and ASCII-compatible encoding (Punycode) according to IDNA 2008 and Unicode Technical Standard 46, with security validation and broader script coverage than the standard library.
Install it if you work with internationalized domain names, need to validate domains, or use HTTP clients that depend on it transitively.
Setuptools is a Python build backend and package management tool that handles building, distributing, and installing Python packages, including support for C/C++ extension modules.
PyYAML parses and emits YAML 1.1 data format, enabling serialization and deserialization of configuration files and Python objects to and from human-readable YAML text.
Pydantic validates Python data structures against type hints, coercing and checking input at runtime to ensure it matches a declared schema.
Provides reusable metadata objects for use with PEP-593 `typing.Annotated` to express common constraints like bounds, collection sizes, and predicates on types.
Install it if you use or build libraries that need to express type constraints in a standardized, inspectable way—or if you want to annotate your own types with…
Provides runtime tools to inspect and introspect Python type annotations, enabling programmatic examination of type hints at execution time.
See also mecab-python3 · python-mecab-ko · konlpy · mecab-ko-dic · python-mecab-ko-dic · kiwipiepy · kiwipiepy-model · mecab · fugashi · g2pkk