Line up three pairs of Korean golf shoes and you may find three different sizing languages on the boxes. One pair reads 37. Another reads 240. A third lists five numbers at once, like a currency board at an airport: 240, US 7, UK 4.5, EU 37.5, 24 cm. For an American shopper this looks like chaos. It isn't. Hiding in that middle number is the most honest sizing system in footwear, and once you understand it, you will wish everything you own used it.
The number is a ruler, not a code
Korean shoe sizes are millimeters. A 240 is built for a foot 240 millimeters long, which is 24 centimeters, or about 9.4 inches. That is the entire system. Japan works the same way in centimeters, so a Korean 240 and a Japanese 24 are making the identical claim. Sizes step in 5 millimeter increments, which is a finer scale than the half-size jumps American shoppers are used to.
Compare that to what a US women's 7 actually tells you: nothing physical. American sizing descends from an old English system based on the barleycorn, a unit of one third of an inch, offset differently for men and women, and applied differently by nearly every manufacturer since. The number on the box is a position on an old scale. A Korean size is a measurement of your body.
Is a 240 the same as a US 7?
Close, on most charts. Here is the conversion used across the women's golf shoes we carry.
|
Korean (mm) |
US Women's |
|
225 |
5.5 |
|
230 |
6 |
|
235 |
6.5 |
|
240 |
7 |
|
245 |
7.5 |
|
250 |
8 |
Treat the US column as a translation and the millimeter column as the truth. Conversions drift a little from brand to brand, because the US size being converted was never a fixed quantity in the first place. Your foot length in millimeters does not drift. That is the number worth knowing.
How to find your millimeters in two minutes
Stand on a sheet of paper in the socks you golf in, with your heel against a wall. Mark the tip of your longest toe, then measure from the paper's edge to the mark. Do it in the evening, when feet are at their largest, and do both feet, because almost nobody's are identical. Use the longer measurement. If it lands between sizes, take the next 5 millimeter step up. A foot measuring 242 millimeters orders a 245, not a 240.
The length cannot run small, because it is a ruler. What varies between brands is width and the shape of the last, the form a shoe is built around. If your forefoot is wide, the practical fix is one 5 millimeter step up from your measured length, which buys width along with the extra length. And when a Korean brand labels its shoes in European sizes instead, as some of our lines do, skip the assumption that it matches your sneakers and check the measurement chart on the product page. The chart always wins.
Why golf makes the fit stakes higher
A street shoe forgives a loose fit because walking is a straight-ahead motion. A golf swing is not. Your lead foot rolls toward the target and your trail foot drives off its inside edge, so a shoe that is even half a size long lets your foot slide through exactly the movement that generates your power. Add the several miles a walking round covers and sizing stops being a comfort question and becomes an equipment one. Millimeter sizing exists for exactly this kind of precision, which may be why Korean golfers never gave it up.
Once you know your number, the rest is browsing. Our women's golf shoes and the full golf shoe range list size charts on every product page, and if you are building out the rest of the wardrobe, apparel has its own logic — we covered it in our Korean golf sizing guide.
