Metal species, produced by meteoric ablation, act as useful tracers of upper atmosphere dynamics and chemistry. Of these meteoric metals, K is an enigma: at extra-tropical latitudes, limited available lidar data shows that the K layer displays a semi-annual seasonal variability, rather than the annual pattern seen in other metals such as Na and Fe. Here we present the first near-global K retrieval, where K atom number density profiles are derived from dayglow measurements made by the OSIRIS spectrometer on-board the Odin satellite. This robust retrieval produces density profiles with typical layer peak errors of ±15% and a 2 km vertical grid resolution. We demonstrate that these retrieved profiles compare well with available lidar data and show for the first time that the unusual semi-annual behavior is global in extent. This new near-global dataset has wider applications for improving understanding of the K chemistry and of related upper atmosphere processes.