🇰🇷 South Korea

Korea's founding mythology dates the establishment of Gojoseon to 2333 BC by the legendary Dangun. The state was later noted in Chinese records and expanded to control the northern peninsula and parts of Manchuria, supplying the origin narrative for Korean national identity.

Speakers of proto-Korean, whose linguistic homeland lay in southern Siberia or Manchuria, reached the southern peninsula around 300 BC. They replaced and assimilated the Japonic-speaking Yayoi, likely prompting their migration to the Japanese archipelago and setting the peninsula's enduring linguistic character.

Han China's conquest ended Wiman Joseon and imposed direct Chinese administration on the northern peninsula. Three commanderies fell or withdrew within decades, but the Lelang commandery endured for four centuries as a hub of cultural and economic exchange with successive Chinese dynasties.

Buddhism reached Korea in the fourth century and became the state religion of Goguryeo in 372 and of Baekje in 528. It shaped royal ideology, art and diplomacy across the Three Kingdoms and was transmitted onward to Japan by Baekje's maritime networks.

Goguryeo's capture of Lelang in 313 removed the last Chinese administrative foothold in the northern peninsula. It marked the consolidation of indigenous Korean states across the territory formerly governed from China.

The Goguryeo–Sui War saw the militaristic northern kingdom repel one of the largest armies ever fielded by a Chinese dynasty. The victory confirmed Goguryeo as the dominant power on the peninsula and a strategic counterweight to continental empires.

Using opportunistic alliances, including with Tang China, the smallest of the three kingdoms unified the peninsula in 676. This began the Northern and Southern States period, with relatively peaceful relations with China and a golden age of art, wealth and maritime trade centred on Gyeongju.

Silla inherited Baekje's maritime prowess and controlled trade between China, Korea and Japan during the eighth and ninth centuries. Korean merchant communities were established on the Shandong Peninsula and at the mouth of the Yangtze, while Gyeongju grew into the world's fourth largest city.

The collapse of Balhae in 926 removed Korean-linked rule over Manchuria and parts of the Russian Far East. A decade later its last crown prince fled south to Goryeo, where he was absorbed into the ruling family, symbolically reuniting the two Goguryeo successor states.

Wang Geon's unification in 936 created Goryeo as the self-declared successor to Goguryeo and ended the fragmentation of the Later Three Kingdoms. The dynasty's lasting unification of the peninsula established the basis of the modern Korean identity and gave Europeans the name 'Korea'.

After defeating the Khitan Empire, Goryeo entered a century-long golden age of printing and publishing, completing the Tripitaka Koreana. The technology promoted education and the diffusion of philosophy, literature, religion and science; by 1100 twelve universities were producing notable scholars.

Following three decades of devastating Mongol invasions, Goryeo — never fully conquered but gravely weakened — sent its crown prince to pledge allegiance to Kublai Khan. Korea remained a semi-autonomous tributary ally for 86 years, with successive kings marrying Mongol princesses.

In the mid-fourteenth century Goryeo expelled Mongol power, regained northern lands, briefly conquered Liaoyang and repelled Red Turban invasions. The military revival raised the standing of commanders such as Yi Seong-gye, who would soon seize the throne.

Ordered to attack China, Yi Seong-gye turned his army around and seized power in 1392. He established the House of Yi, renamed the state Joseon after Gojoseon and moved the capital to Hanseong, beginning a dynasty that lasted until 1897.

Sejong the Great commissioned scholars to design a simplified writing system to replace the use of Chinese characters, publishing the Hunminjeongeum document in 1446. Hangul became the primary script of both Koreas and is credited with helping achieve one of the world's highest literacy rates.

When the Portuguese took Malacca in 1511, Albuquerque recorded traders from the Kingdom of Goryeo as the 'Gores'. This was Europe's first knowledge of Korea, later reflected in Portuguese maps of 1568 and the seventeenth-century form 'Corea'.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's forces invaded in 1592 and again in 1597, before being driven out with Ming Chinese support and naval victories led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin's armoured turtle ships. The war devastated the Korean peninsula and reshaped power balances across East Asia.

Exploiting Joseon's exhaustion after the Japanese invasions, Manchu armies invaded in 1627 and again in 1637. Once relations with the Qing dynasty were normalised, Joseon entered nearly two centuries of peace, with a cultural renaissance under Kings Yeongjo and Jeongjo in the eighteenth century.

Unlike elsewhere in East Asia, Christianity found fertile ground in Korea during the eighteenth century, aided by a declining monarchy that opened the country to proselytism as part of a Westernisation project. Weak Korean shamanism and a Buddhism suppressed for five centuries left the field open to Christian churches.

The 1882 treaty forced the 'hermit kingdom' to abandon strict isolationism under pressure from foreign powers. It came amid economic difficulty, corruption by royal in-law families and widespread uprisings including the Donghak Peasant Revolution.

In 1897 Gojong changed the country's official name from Joseon to Daehan Jeguk, the Great Han Empire. The new empire pursued modernisation and reform but survived only until Japanese annexation in 1910.

Having defeated Qing China and the Russian Empire, Japan forced Korea into protectorate status in 1905. This stripped the Korean Empire of foreign policy autonomy and set the stage for formal annexation five years later.

An independent kingdom for much of its long history, Korea was occupied by Japan from 1905 following the Russo-Japanese War, and Tokyo annexed the entire peninsula in 1910, beginning 35 years of colonial rule. Japan pursued forced assimilation, suppressing the Korean language, culture and history and imposing Japanese-style architecture and Imperial Shinto. The colonial period remains a central grievance in Korea–Japan relations.

Mass protests in March 1919 challenged Japanese assimilation policy and led to the founding of exile resistance groups, principally in China, among them the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. The date is commemorated as Korean Independence Day.

The 1943 Cairo Declaration set out Allied intent to free a unified Korean peninsula from Japanese rule. Escalating Soviet–American tensions instead produced partition, making the declaration's promise unfulfilled.

Japan's 35-year annexation, formalised in 1910, ended with its defeat in the Second World War in August 1945, a liberation still marked as Liberation Day. The United States proposed splitting Korea into American and Soviet occupation zones, with Dean Rusk and Charles H. Bonesteel III choosing the 38th parallel so that Seoul fell under US control; to their surprise the Soviets accepted. Soviet and US forces then occupied the peninsula either side of the line, a division that hardened into two separate states by 1948 and endures today.

The southern zone became the Republic of Korea in August 1948 and the northern zone the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea in September, with Kim Il Sung as premier. In October the Soviet Union declared Kim's government sovereign over the whole peninsula, while the UN recognised Rhee's government as the only lawful one in the areas it observed.

UN-supervised direct elections in the southern zone in May 1948 were won by Syngman Rhee, whom the United States had installed as leader after his time heading the Korean Provisional Government, and led to the declaration of the Republic of Korea on 15 August with Rhee as its first president. The constitution was promulgated the same year and has been revised several times since. A separate government took power in the North weeks later, cementing the peninsula's division.

North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950, triggering the Cold War's first major proxy conflict. With the Soviet Union boycotting the UN and unable to veto, the American-led United Nations Command intervened, and Chinese troops later committed in huge numbers to the North. The war killed an estimated 2–3 million people and ended in a 1953 armistice, without a peace treaty.

The 1953 armistice, never signed by South Korea, split the peninsula along a demilitarised zone near the original demarcation line. Roughly three million people died, virtually all major Korean cities were destroyed, and the absence of a peace treaty means the conflict formally continues.

A student uprising in 1960 ended the autocratic rule of the first president. It was followed by thirteen months of instability under a weak Second Republic, leaving the state vulnerable to military intervention.

Under Park Chung Hee South Korea took an active combat role in Vietnam, deploying over 325,000 troops with a peak strength of 50,000. The commitment deepened the alliance with the United States and brought economic returns during the industrialisation drive.

From the 1960s the Park government channelled investment into family-run conglomerates such as Samsung, LG and SK, building heavy industry and export capacity, and constructed the nationwide expressway system and the Seoul subway, laying the foundations of the Miracle on the Han River. Over Park's 1961–79 regime per capita income rose to roughly seventeen times the level of North Korea as export-led industrialisation transformed the economy.

On 16 May 1961 General Park Chung Hee led a group of army officers in overthrowing the short-lived democratic Second Republic that had followed the 1960 April Revolution against Syngman Rhee, installing a military-led government. His subsequent 18-year rule combined authoritarian repression with rapid state-led, export-oriented industrialisation that reshaped South Korea's economic trajectory.

In 1972 Park promulgated a constitution allowing unlimited six-year presidential terms and sweeping executive authority. It entrenched authoritarian rule for the remainder of his seventeen-year tenure.

Park was killed on 26 October 1979, creating a sudden political void in which previously suppressed opposition leaders campaigned for the presidency. The turmoil opened the way for a second military seizure of power within months.

Chun's coup ended the brief post-assassination opening and installed a new military strongman. On 17 May 1980 he extended martial law nationwide, closing universities, banning political activity and curtailing the press.

Nationwide protests against Chun Doo-hwan's seizure of power were most intense in Gwangju, where troops under his martial law government fired on demonstrators between 18 and 27 May 1980. Death toll estimates range from around 200 in official counts to 1,000–2,000 in independent accounts, alongside 26 soldiers killed. The massacre became the defining atrocity of the authoritarian era and a touchstone of the democracy movement.

The torture death of student Park Jong-chul, revealed on 10 June 1987 by the Catholic Priests Association for Justice, ignited weeks of nationwide protests that pressured Chun Doo-hwan's government into concessions. Ruling-party leader Roh Tae-woo issued the June 29 Declaration promising direct presidential elections, and a new constitution was adopted by referendum that October, establishing the Sixth Republic that remains in force today.

Roh Tae-woo, a former army general, narrowly won South Korea's first free presidential election in December 1987 under the revised democratic constitution, defeating the divided opposition leaders Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam. The result completed the formal transition from military rule while keeping the ruling party in power, inaugurating the democratic Sixth Republic.

The Seoul Games were widely regarded as a success and a major boost to South Korea's global image and economy, with the host finishing fourth in the medal table. They also opened the architectural market to foreign designers and spurred cultural infrastructure such as the Olympic Sculpture Garden.

South Korea joined the UN in 1991, at the same time as North Korea. Membership formalised its international standing after four decades in which its legitimacy had been contested.

Moon committed South Korea to eliminating net greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. The pledge followed 2017 data showing the country as the world's seventh largest emitter of carbon and fifth largest per capita, alongside a renewable portfolio standard programme running from 2012 to 2022.

Exports reached 98.89 billion dollars in July 2026, the second-highest monthly total on record, with semiconductor shipments topping 40 billion dollars and shipments to China up 96.2 per cent to 21.68 billion dollars. Agricultural and seafood exports also set a July record, data released in early August showed.

The Monetary Policy Board raised the base rate by 0.25 percentage points to 2.75 per cent on 16 July 2026, its first increase in more than three years. Regulators meeting the same day also announced curbs on single-stock leveraged funds fuelling a retail trading boom.

Chung said on 23 July 2026 that South Korea would seek reciprocal concessions for a freeze on North Korea's nuclear activity, rather than demanding immediate full denuclearisation, a shift president Lee Jae-myung described as recognising a harsh reality.

Exit polls on 3 June 2026 pointed to a landslide win for the Democratic Party, which took 12 of 16 regional races against four for the opposition. A shortage of printed ballots in 91 districts extended voting hours and led the election commission's chairman to resign.

The commission imposed the 624.6 billion won (400 million dollars) fine on 10 June 2026 over a 2025 breach at the e-commerce platform that exposed data belonging to around 37.5 million users. It ranked among the largest data-protection penalties issued in South Korea.

A court sentenced Yoon on 12 June 2026, finding he had ordered the military to send drones into North Korea in 2024 to provoke a response that would justify martial law. The verdict followed a February raid on the intelligence services investigating the flights.

The Seoul Central District Court found Yoon guilty on 19 February 2026 of leading an insurrection through his December 2024 declaration of martial law, handing down a life sentence rather than the death penalty prosecutors had sought. His lawyers said they would appeal.

Leaders met at the Gyeongju convention centre on 31 October and 1 November 2025, adopting the Gyeongju Declaration and new initiatives on artificial intelligence. Xi Jinping made his first visit to South Korea in 11 years, while Trump left before the leaders' meeting concluded.

Details released in November 2025 set out South Korea's commitment to invest around 350 billion dollars in the United States and buy about 100 billion dollars of American energy products, in return for tariffs on cars and other goods being cut to 15 per cent.

The destroyer was launched at an HD Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard in Ulsan on 17 September 2025, part of South Korea's continuing programme to expand its fleet of guided-missile destroyers. It was named after the Joseon-era scholar and reformer Jeong Yak-yong.

Lee Jae-myung won the election to succeed the removed Yoon Suk Yeol and assumed office immediately on 4 June 2025. The rapid constitutional transfer of power followed the country's gravest political crisis since democratisation.

Yoon declared martial law on 3 December 2024, accusing the opposition of pro-North Korean anti-state activity; the National Assembly nullified it 190–0 within hours and he ended it on 4 December. He was impeached on 14 December 2024 and unanimously removed from office on 4 April 2025, the first martial law declaration since 1980.

Foreign nationals reached nearly 5 percent of the population by November 2023, up from 1.4 million in 2016. Around 30,000 foreign-born residents have obtained citizenship annually since 2010, marking a shift for a historically homogeneous society.

After R&D spending rose from about 3.9% of GDP in 2013 to over 4.9% in 2022 — second only to Israel — the government announced a roughly 11% cut for 2024. Resources were to be redirected towards rocketry, biomedical research and US-style biotech innovation.

The People Power Party candidate narrowly defeated Democratic Party rival Lee Jae-myung in March 2022 and was sworn in on 10 May. His presidency prompted debate about democratic backsliding and the reemergence of authoritarianism.

The Nuri rocket launched on 21 October 2021, making South Korea one of the few nations able to place payloads in orbit using domestically developed launch vehicles. It capped three decades of dependence on foreign rockets and overseas launch pads.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic the country registered its first population decrease since modern records began. The fertility rate fell to 0.81 in 2021, 0.72 in 2023 — the lowest in the world — and prompted the declaration of a national emergency and a new ministry in May 2024 to address the decline.

The Winter Games in Pyeongchang were successfully staged under the Moon administration and coincided with a thaw in relations with North Korea. They followed a long record of major event hosting including the 1988 Summer Olympics and Asian Games in 1986, 2002 and 2014.

On 28 June 2018 the Constitutional Court ruled the Military Service Act unconstitutional and ordered civilian alternatives, and on 1 November the Supreme Court legalised conscientious objection. Previously over 400 men were typically imprisoned at any one time for refusing conscription.

The Democratic Party candidate won the snap election and took office immediately on 10 May 2017. His tenure brought improved relations with Pyongyang, some divergence in the alliance with the United States, and the successful hosting of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

Nationwide demonstrations from November 2016 over the Choi Soon-sil scandal culminated in Park's removal from office. In April 2018 she was convicted of abuse of power and corruption and sentenced to 24 years in jail, a landmark demonstration of judicial accountability.

Park Geun-hye, daughter of former president Park Chung-hee, won the December 2012 election for the conservatives and was inaugurated in February 2013 as South Korea's first woman president; the same period saw Kim Jong Un succeed his father in the North. Her administration was later accused of corruption, bribery and influence-peddling involving her confidante Choi Soon-sil.

Cyberattacks in the first half of 2013 compromised government, news media, television and banking websites. Seoul blamed North Korea, as it had for incidents in 2009, 2011 and 2012, and committed to training 5,000 new cybersecurity specialists by 2017.

South Korea held a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2013–14 term and was selected to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang.

In March 2010 the warship ROKS Cheonan was sunk with 46 sailors lost, allegedly by a North Korean submarine, and in November an artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong Island killed four; the official UN report declined to name North Korea for the sinking, and the weak response provoked significant public anger in the South. Tensions continued through the North's nuclear and missile tests and the temporary closure of the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex in 2013.

The Naro Space Center at Goheung in South Jeolla Province opened in June 2009. It hosted the successful launch of Naro-1 in January 2013 after two failures, beginning domestic launch operations.

Yi So-yeon flew aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-12 in April 2008, a milestone in the country's space partnership with Russia. South Korea had launched ten satellites since 1992, all on foreign rockets from overseas pads.

South Korea was one of the few developed countries to escape recession in the global financial crisis. Its trade-dependent economy remained among the fastest-growing developed economies of the 2000s, ranking fifth-largest exporter by 2014.

In 2005 KAIST developed the world's second walking humanoid robot, HUBO, and Korean scientists achieved the first successful cloning of a dog. Robotics had been a designated national research priority since 2003, and the Seoul National University cloned endangered gray wolves in 2007.

In 2004 Seoul sent 3,300 troops to help rebuild northern Iraq, ranking behind only the United States and Britain in the coalition. From 2001 it had deployed some 24,000 troops in the Middle East in support of the war on terror.

Co-hosting the World Cup improved bilateral relations and showcased South Korea internationally, with the national team reaching the semi-finals. Ties later soured over conflicting sovereignty claims to the Liancourt Rocks.

The June 2000 summit with Kim Jong Il was the centrepiece of Kim Dae-jung's engagement strategy towards the North. He received the Nobel Peace Prize later that year for his work on democracy, human rights and reconciliation with North Korea.

Kim Dae-jung, president from 1998 to 2003, received the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to South Korean democracy and his 'Sunshine' policy of engagement with North Korea.

The success of Shiri in 1999 launched substantial growth in domestic cinema, protected by screen quotas requiring 73 days of Korean films a year. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite became the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2019, and Squid Game in 2021 became Netflix's most-watched series at launch with over 142 million households in four weeks.

Elected in 1997 and inaugurated on 25 February 1998, Kim had once been a political prisoner sentenced to death and later exiled. His victory marked the first transfer of power to a long-persecuted opposition leader and confirmed South Korea's democratic consolidation.

The Korean won collapsed in November 1997 as short-term foreign debt came due, prompting a rescue package of about 58 billion dollars arranged with the IMF and other lenders. The crisis severely damaged the economy and shaped the presidential election won by Kim Dae-jung, and led to sweeping restructuring of banks and the chaebol conglomerates under IMF advice. The country recovered quickly and subsequently tripled its GDP, though growth resumed at a slower pace.

Membership of the OECD in 1996 confirmed South Korea's arrival among developed economies after decades as one of the world's fastest-growing. It followed the fastest rise in average GDP per capita in the world between 1980 and 1990.

Kim Young-sam, who served from 1993 to 1998, was the first president without a military background since the democratic transition.

The group's emergence in 1992 transformed a scene previously dominated by trot and folk-based ballads. K-pop subsequently absorbed global genres and became the spearhead of the Korean Wave, with Psy's 'Gangnam Style' topping world charts in 2012.

Though on opposing sides during the Cold War, Seoul and Beijing have improved ties steadily since 1992. China later became a major investor, putting $1.4 billion into South Korea, largely in services — a sevenfold increase on 2001.