In 2011, Jung Nam Kim, president of the Korean Society of Tamil Studies, mentioned that the similarities between Korean and Dravidian are strong, but he also said that this does not prove a genetic link between Dravidian and Korean, and that more research needs to be done. However, contact with Tamil merchants and a limited inflow of immigrants may have influenced the formation of the Gaya confederacy. Since the Samguk yusa was compiled in the 12th century, and contains mythical narratives, it is not strong evidence. The Samguk yusa describes Heo Hwang-ok, who was the first queen of the Geumgwan Gaya-a statelet of the Gaya confederacy-as coming from India's Ayuta or Ay ( Kanyakumari) in Tamil Nadu. For example, the Karak Kingdom of King Suro was named after the proto-Dravidian meaning fish. Hulbert, many of the names of ancient cities of southern Korea were the exact counterpart of Dravidian words. Lee Ki-Moon, Professor Emeritus at Seoul National University, argued in 2011 that Clippinger's conclusion should be revisited. However, Clippinger applied the comparative method systematically to Middle Korean forms and reconstructed Dravidian forms. Later, Susumu Ōno caused a stir in Japan with his theory that Tamil constituted a lexical stratum of both Korean and Japanese, which was widely publicized in the following years but was quickly abandoned. Hulbert wrote a comparative grammar of Korean and Dravidian in which he hypothesized a genetic connection between the two. Similarities between the Dravidian languages and Korean were first noted by French missionaries in Korea.
3 List of potential Korean-Tamil cognates.