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Due to the semantic characteristics of this law, it has also been observed in musical data. However, most such studies have focused on Western music, and its applicability to non-Western music remains not well investigated. We analyzed 43 Korean court music pieces called Jeong-ak, spanning several centuries and written in the traditional Korean musical notation Jeongganbo. These pieces were transcribed into Western staff notation, and musical data such as pitch and duration were extracted. Using pitch, duration, and their paired combinations as Zipfian units, we found that Korean music also fits the Zipf\u2013Mandelbrot law to a high degree, particularly for the paired pitch\u2013duration unit. Korean music has evolved collectively over long periods, smoothing idiosyncratic variations and producing forms that are widely understandable among people. This collective evolution appears to have played a significant role in shaping the characteristics that lead to the satisfaction of Zipf\u2013Mandelbrot law. Our findings provide additional evidence that Zipf\u2013Mandelbrot scaling in musical data is universal across cultures. We further show that the joint distribution of two independent Zipfian data sets follows the Zipf\u2013Mandelbrot law.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1063\/5.0337970","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,10]],"date-time":"2026-09-10T12:56:38Z","timestamp":1789044998000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1063\/aip-crossmark-policy-page","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Zipf\u2013Mandelbrot scaling in Korean court music: Universal patterns in music"],"prefix":"10.1063","volume":"36","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0000-3660-1738","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Byeongchan","family":"Choi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mathematics, POSTECH 1 , Pohang 37673,","place":["South Korea"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0000-6220-7275","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Junwon","family":"You","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mathematical Sciences, KAIST 2 , Daejeon 34141,","place":["South Korea"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0000-1211-2761","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Myung Ock","family":"Kim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Open KIAS Center, Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) 3 , Seoul 02455,","place":["South Korea"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7923-0674","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jae-Hun","family":"Jung","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mathematics, POSTECH 1 , Pohang 37673,","place":["South Korea"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"317","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026091008563112200_c1","volume-title":"The Psycho-Biology of Language: An Introduction to Dynamic Philology","year":"1935"},{"key":"2026091008563112200_c2","volume-title":"Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort","year":"1949"},{"key":"2026091008563112200_c3","article-title":"An informational theory of the statistical structure of language","volume-title":"Communication Theory"},{"key":"2026091008563112200_c4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"788","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0335980100","article-title":"Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language","volume":"100","year":"2003","journal-title":"Proc. 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