98 Fun Facts About South Korea

What is South Korea's official name?

Republic of Korea: the name is older than the state, first used by the provisional government that independence activists set up in exile in Shanghai in 1919.

Roughly what share of South Korea's 52 million people live in the Seoul metropolitan area?

About half of South Koreans, roughly 26 million of 52 million, live in the Seoul Capital Area of Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province, one of the most populous metropolitan regions on Earth.

The name "Korea" derives from which historical kingdom?

Goryeo ruled from 918 to 1392 and gave English the word, yet it is a name only outsiders use: South Koreans call their country Hanguk.

Which three kingdoms shared Korea in the Three Kingdoms period, which ended when Silla conquered the other two?

Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla shared the peninsula for centuries; Silla allied with Tang China to take Baekje in 660 and Goguryeo in 668, then drove the Tang armies out.

What ended the Korean Empire in 1910?

Japanese annexation: a treaty signed in August 1910 ended the empire after only 13 years and opened 35 years of colonial rule, which lasted until 1945.

Which king had Hangul, Korea's own script, created to promote literacy among ordinary people?

Sejong the Great published the script in 1446 over the objections of court scholars: Choe Manri and other Confucian officials had petitioned him against it in 1444.

South Korea's public holiday on 9 October celebrates the creation of what?

The Korean alphabet: Hangul Day marks the script's publication in 1446. It became a day off in 1949, lost that status after 1990 and won it back in 2013.

Which admiral's "turtle ships" helped halt the Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s?

Yi Sun-sin's fleet cut Japan's supply lines by sea; stripped of command and tortured in 1597, he was recalled after his replacement lost almost the whole navy at Chilcheollyang.

In which year was the southern zone of the peninsula established as an independent state?

The Republic of Korea was proclaimed on 15 August 1948, three months after a UN-supervised National Assembly election in the south; the North declared its own state on 9 September 1948.

The Korean War ended in 1953 with what?

Fighting ended with an armistice signed at Panmunjom on 27 July 1953; no peace treaty followed, so the two Koreas remained formally at war for decades afterward.

How wide is the Korean Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South?

About 4 km wide: each army pulled back 2 km from the 1953 front line, and decades with almost no people have turned the strip into a haven for cranes and other wildlife.

The DMZ intersects which line of latitude?

The 38th parallel was the dividing line of 1945, but the DMZ follows the 1953 front line instead, so it crosses the parallel at an angle: south of it in the west, north of it in the east.

Which general seized power in South Korea's 1961 coup?

Park Chung Hee ruled for 18 years, until the director of his own intelligence agency, Kim Jae-gyu, shot him during a dinner in October 1979.

South Korea's rapid post-war economic transformation is known by what nickname?

The Miracle on the Han River, named for the river through Seoul, took the country from aid recipient to aid donor: in 2010 it joined the OECD's committee of donor nations.

The mass protests of 1987 that won South Koreans direct presidential elections are known as what?

The June Democratic Struggle swelled after a student activist, Park Jong-chul, died under police torture; within weeks the regime agreed to direct elections.

Which South Korean president won the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his "Sunshine Policy" towards the North?

Kim Dae-jung, president from 1998 to 2003, won the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize after his Sunshine Policy produced the first inter-Korean summit, with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in June 2000.

At the 2002 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted with Japan, how far did South Korea get?

The semi-finals: Ahn Jung-hwan's golden goal knocked out Italy, whereupon the president of his Italian club, Perugia, said he would never play for it again; Germany ended the run 1-0.

Which South Korean county hosted the 2018 Winter Olympics?

Pyeongchang won the Games on its third bid, and organisers styled the name 'PyeongChang', with a capital C, to head off confusion with Pyongyang, the North's capital.

Which martial art became an official Olympic medal sport at the Sydney 2000 Games?

Taekwondo got its name only in 1955, when General Choi Hong-hi helped unite Korea's rival schools; it was first shown at the Olympics as a demonstration sport in Seoul in 1988.

Which game's televised pro leagues turned South Korea into an esports powerhouse in the early 2000s?

StarCraft, released by Blizzard in 1998, was broadcast on dedicated Korean cable channels such as OnGameNet, and pro players like Lim Yo-hwan became national celebrities.

What is the Gangnam in Psy's "Gangnam Style"?

A Seoul district: Gangnam is known for its concentrated wealth and showy spending, and Psy said the song pokes fun at posers who try hard to look as if they belong there.

A member of K-pop pioneers Seo Taiji and Boys founded which label?

YG Entertainment: Yang Hyun-suk set it up after the trio split. At their 1992 TV debut the judges gave 'Nan Arayo' the lowest score of the night, yet the song went on to top the charts for 17 weeks.

In 2020 BTS became the first all-South Korean act to top the Billboard Hot 100 with which single?

Dynamite was the first song BTS recorded entirely in English, released in August 2020 to lift spirits during the pandemic; it entered the Hot 100 at No. 1.

What does the name BTS, Bangtan Sonyeondan, literally mean?

Bulletproof Boy Scouts: member J-Hope has said the name is about blocking the stereotypes and criticism aimed at young people like bullets; the English reading Beyond the Scene came in 2017.

Bong Joon-ho's Parasite made Oscar history in 2020 as the first what?

Non-English-language film to win Best Picture: only a few years earlier, a government blacklist had cut its director and thousands of other artists off from state funding.

In Squid Game, 456 players risk their lives playing what?

Children's games: Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote the story in 2009 while short of money himself, and no studio would fund it for a decade until Netflix stepped in.

The global boom in South Korean music, dramas and film is known by what name?

Hallyu means 'Korean wave', and the label is not home-grown: it took hold in China in the late 1990s, when Korean TV dramas and pop first won big audiences there.

Many South Korean homes have a second refrigerator built specially to store which food?

Kimchi: winter batches were traditionally buried in earthenware jars to stay cool without freezing, and the dedicated fridge holds the steady low temperature that slow fermentation needs.

Unlike most of their East Asian neighbours, Koreans traditionally eat with chopsticks made of what?

Metal chopsticks, today usually stainless steel, come paired with a long-handled spoon in a set called sujeo; the custom is believed to stem from royal silver chopsticks used to detect poison.

The name of the grilled dish bulgogi literally means what?

Fire meat: bul is 'fire' and gogi is 'meat'. The marinated beef is grilled, then often eaten wrapped in a lettuce leaf with the side dishes.

Soju, Korea's best-known spirit, was traditionally distilled from what?

Soju was traditionally distilled from rice; a 1965 ban on distilling grain, meant to save rice, pushed makers to diluted ethanol from sweet potatoes, tapioca and other starches.

Chuseok, when South Koreans travel to their home towns, celebrates what?

The autumn harvest: Chuseok falls at the full moon of the eighth lunar month, when families honour their ancestors and share songpyeon, half-moon cakes steamed over pine needles.

The four black trigrams on South Korea's flag stand for heaven, earth, fire and what?

Water: the four trigrams frame the red-and-blue taegeuk. By his own journal, envoy Park Yeong-hyo drew up the flag aboard a ship to Japan in 1882, and the king made it the national flag in 1883.

Which flower, mentioned in the national anthem, is South Korea's national flower?

The rose of Sharon is mugunghwa in Korean, meaning 'eternal blossom that never fades'; it became the national flower because Koreans already sang of it in the anthem's chorus.

South Korea's largest island, lying off the southern coast with its own endangered language, is called what?

Jeju is home to the haenyeo, women who free-dive for shellfish without breathing gear, some of them into their eighties; UNESCO added their culture to its intangible heritage list in 2016.

South Korea's highest mountain, Hallasan, stands where?

On an island: Hallasan is a shield volcano whose eruptions built the island around it, and at about 1,950 m its summit tops every peak on the South Korean mainland.

The Liancourt Rocks, disputed with Japan, are known in South Korea by what name?

South Korea calls the islets Dokdo and has kept a police guard there since the 1950s; Japan calls them Takeshima and maintains its claim, which regularly sours relations.

Which South Korean conglomerate began in 1938 as a small trading company dealing in dried fish and noodles?

Samsung: Lee Byung-chul founded it in Daegu with forty employees, and it did not enter electronics until 1969, when its first product was a black-and-white television.

What is the Korean term for the family-controlled conglomerates such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG?

Chaebol joins the words for 'wealth' and 'clan'; the groups grew huge because the state steered cheap credit to chosen firms in return for hitting export targets.

Which achievement can exempt South Korean men from military service?

Asian Games gold, like any Olympic medal, cuts service to a few weeks of basic training, which is how footballer Son Heung-min was spared in 2018; BTS's chart success earned no such pass.

In 2023 South Korea recorded the lowest figure of any country in the world for which rate?

Fertility rate: at 0.72 births per woman, about a third of the 2.1 that keeps a population steady, the country has had more deaths than births since 2020.

Which religion topped Buddhism in South Korea's 2015 census?

Christianity: Protestants (19.7%) and Catholics (7.9%) together outnumbered Buddhists (15.5%) in 2015, yet the largest group of all, more than half the country, claimed no religion.

Which planned city, launched in 2012, serves as South Korea's de facto administrative capital?

Sejong was built to relieve crowded Seoul. A court ruled in 2004 that the capital itself had to stay put, so ministries and agencies began moving there in 2012 instead.

In June 2023 South Korea dropped which traditional practice from official use?

Korean age reckoning counted a baby as one at birth and added a year every New Year's Day, so the switch to international age made people a year or two younger on paper.

Which South Korean diplomat was UN Secretary-General from 2007 to 2016?

Ban Ki-moon traced his career to 1962, when he travelled to the United States as a schoolboy on a Red Cross programme and met President Kennedy; he was foreign minister before leading the UN.

In 2022 Son Heung-min became the first Asian player to win which Premier League award?

The Golden Boot: Son scored twice at Norwich on the final day to finish level with Mohamed Salah on 23 goals, making them joint winners.

Yuna Kim, the first South Korean figure skater to win an Olympic medal, took gold at which Games?

Vancouver 2010: she won with a then world-record 228.56 points, and eight years later she lit the cauldron when South Korea opened its own Winter Games.

Which 123-storey Seoul skyscraper became South Korea's tallest building in 2017?

Lotte World Tower was held up for more than a decade because the air force feared planes using a nearby base could hit it; approval came once Lotte agreed to pay for turning a runway by three degrees.

In December 2024, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol briefly declared what, leading to his impeachment and removal?

Martial law lasted only hours: the National Assembly voted 190-0 to nullify it, and Yoon was removed from office in April 2025.

Gyeongbokgung, established in 1395, was the first royal palace of which dynasty?

Gyeongbokgung was built in 1395 as the main palace of the new Joseon dynasty, three years after Yi Seong-gye founded it; burned in the 1592 Japanese invasion, it was rebuilt in 1867.

Which two US officers proposed the 38th parallel as Korea's dividing line in 1945?

Colonels Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel picked the 38th parallel in about thirty minutes on the night of 10 August 1945 because it kept Seoul in the US zone; they were surprised when the Soviets accepted.

Who became South Korea's first president in 1948?

Syngman Rhee was chosen by the National Assembly in July 1948; he had headed the provisional government in exile from 1919, and student protests forced him out in 1960.

Which 1960 student uprising forced South Korea's first president to resign?

The April Revolution spread from the port of Masan after the body of a student killed by police was discovered; the president resigned on 26 April and left for Hawaii.

In May 1980, paratroopers sent by Chun Doo-hwan's military regime crushed a pro-democracy uprising in which city?

Gwangju: citizens armed themselves and held the city for several days before the army retook it on 27 May; 18 May has been a national day of commemoration since 1997.

Who united the Later Three Kingdoms in 936, founding the dynasty that gave Korea its name?

Wang Geon, posthumously King Taejo, founded Goryeo in 918 and completed unification in 936 after Silla surrendered and Later Baekje fell; he also welcomed Balhae's last crown prince into the royal clan.

Ondol, a feature of Korean homes for centuries, is a traditional system for what?

Underfloor heating: smoke from the kitchen firebox ran through passages under a stone floor and out by a chimney on the far side, warming the room from below through the bitter winters.

Which South Korean president was removed from office in 2017?

Park Geun-hye, the country's first female president, fell after months of mass street protests over a confidante's hold on her; in 2018 a court sentenced her to 24 years in prison for corruption.

Who won South Korea's June 2025 presidential election, called after Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from office?

Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party won the 3 June 2025 snap election and took office the next day; he had lost to Yoon by a record-narrow 0.73 points in 2022.

South Korea grounds planes nationwide for part of one November day each year so noise cannot disturb which event?

The college entrance exam, the Suneung, brings the country to a hush: flights pause for its English listening section and even the stock market opens late that day.

During the Asian financial crisis, about 3.5 million South Koreans handed in what to help repay an IMF loan?

Gold worth about $2 billion, some 227 tons of it, was handed over in early 1998, echoing a 1907 public drive to pay off the Korean Empire's national debt.

Which children's song, recorded by South Korea's Pinkfong, became the first YouTube video to reach 10 billion views?

Baby Shark crossed that mark in January 2022. Pinkfong did not write the tune: it had been a camp sing-along for decades and is believed to be in the public domain.

The founder of the South Korean electronics giant Samsung chose a company name with which meaning?

Three stars is the meaning its founder gave: three for something big, numerous and powerful, stars for something everlasting.

South Koreans exchange holiday gift sets of which American product, first spread through US army bases?

Spam spread from US bases during the Korean War, when soldiers bartered it for goods and services; it also anchors budae-jjigae, the spicy 'army base stew'.

Which K-pop girl group made history in 2023 as the first Asian act to headline the Coachella festival?

Blackpink topped the Coachella bill having already become, in 2019, the first female K-pop group to play the California festival at all.

South Korea's women won the team event at ten straight Summer Olympics up to Paris 2024 in which sport?

Archery's women's team event had known no other champion by 2024: South Korea finished first every time from the event's debut at the Seoul Games.

South Korea's Park Ji-sung, the first Asian to play in a Champions League final, spent seven years at which club?

Manchester United signed him from PSV Eindhoven in 2005 after Sir Alex Ferguson, there to assess another player, was struck by how Park moved and found space.

Which poetic nickname for Korea did the American astronomer Percival Lowell use in the title of his 1880s book?

Land of the Morning Calm is a loose reading of the characters in an old dynastic name; Koreans themselves rarely use it, knowing it mainly as a phrase translated back from English.

Which Korean word, meaning 'country of the Han', do South Koreans use for their own country?

Hanguk is not shared across the border: North Koreans use an entirely different name for Korea, taken from an older dynasty, so the two states disagree even on what to call it.

Which currency, whose 50,000 note carries a portrait of the artist Shin Saimdang, is used in South Korea?

The won shares its roots with the Chinese yuan and Japanese yen: all of them were derived from the Spanish-American silver dollar once used across Asian trade.

Which port, South Korea's second most populous city, hosts one of Asia's best-known film festivals each autumn?

Busan lent its older spelling to the Pusan Perimeter, the defensive line UN troops held around the city in August and September 1950.

Lee Sang-hyeok, the South Korean esports player better known as Faker, built his fame in which game?

League of Legends made him the biggest name in competitive gaming, so dominant that he has been compared to the basketball player Michael Jordan.

Hodori, the friendly mascot of the Summer Olympics held in Seoul, was a cartoon version of which animal?

A tiger, and his name says so: 'ho' comes from horangi, the Korean word for the animal, and 'dori' is a masculine diminutive.

Which sport is played in the KBO League, founded in 1982 and South Korea's most popular sports league?

Baseball's KBO is known for exuberant crowds and for the bat flip, a celebration so common that Korean has its own word for it, ppa-dun.

When Japan's rule over Korea ended in 1945, which country's forces occupied the north of the peninsula?

The Soviet Union took the north and the United States the south in what was meant as a temporary arrangement; talks on reuniting Korea broke down as the Cold War set in.

A surprise amphibious landing at which port city turned the Korean War in September 1950, freeing Seoul within weeks?

Incheon's harbour had fast currents and extreme tides, and US Navy leaders wanted a safer site; the gamble paid off, and the largely undefended city fell quickly.

Which American general, commander of UN forces in the Korean War, was dismissed by President Truman in 1951?

Douglas MacArthur had publicly contradicted the administration's policies, and by removing him Truman upheld the principle that the president, not a general, has the last word.

Before turning to cars, Kia built South Korea's first homegrown example of which vehicle in the early 1950s?

A bicycle, the Samchuly, came first: Kia began in 1944 making steel tubing and bike parts, then moved on to licensed Honda motorcycles and Mazda trucks before cars.

Youn Yuh-jung became the first Korean actress to win an Oscar for playing a grandmother in which 2020 film?

Minari follows a Korean immigrant family farming in rural Arkansas; Youn had begun acting on Korean television in the 1960s and made her Hollywood debut with the film.

The 1919 protests against Japanese rule in Korea, launched with a declaration of independence, are known by which name?

The March First Movement spread across Korea and to Koreans abroad, fuelled in part by suspicion that the former emperor Gojong had been poisoned; South Korea marks the date as a national holiday.

Which former village gives its name to the DMZ site where North and South Korean officials meet in blue huts?

Panmunjom's blue buildings straddle the Military Demarcation Line itself, so each one stands partly in the North and partly in the South.

Falling between World War II and Vietnam, the Korean War is often known in the English-speaking world by which nickname?

The Forgotten War drew little public attention abroad, yet about 3 million people died in it, most of them civilians, making it perhaps the deadliest conflict of the Cold War era.

Which Dutch coach was made an honorary South Korean citizen after leading the national team at the 2002 World Cup?

Guus Hiddink was the first person ever given that honour, and his other rewards included free flights for life with the country's two main airlines and free taxi rides.

At the 2018 Winter Olympics, athletes from North and South Korea played together as one team in which sport?

Ice hockey's unified women's team played simply as 'Korea', and the folk song Arirang was used for it in place of either country's national anthem.

Which South Korean novelist, author of The Vegetarian, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024?

Han Kang became the first Asian woman to take the prize; The Vegetarian had already made her the first Korean-language winner of the International Booker Prize.

Which Squid Game actor became the first Asian man to win the Emmy for lead actor in a drama series?

Lee Jung-jae won in 2022 for playing Seong Gi-hun; the show's creator said he cast him in order to destroy the charismatic image of his earlier roles.

South Korea asks mapmakers to label the Sea of Japan with which alternative name, often shown in brackets?

The East Sea was first pressed as a name at a UN conference in 1992; Korea had no voice when 'Japan Sea' became the international standard in 1929, being under colonial rule.

Which South Korean director made the revenge thriller Oldboy and the period drama The Handmaiden?

Park Chan-wook made Oldboy as the middle film of his Vengeance Trilogy, and went on to win Best Director at Cannes in 2022 for Decision to Leave.

Which South Korean city, often called 'the museum without walls', was a royal capital for almost a thousand years?

Gyeongju's ancient name, Seorabeol, is believed to have become the Korean word for 'capital city' that in turn gave Seoul its name.

South Korea's Haeinsa temple houses the Tripitaka Koreana, a Buddhist canon carved onto more than 80,000 what?

Woodblocks, kept at the temple since 1398, hold over 52 million characters between them; laid end to end they would stretch about 60 km, and together they weigh 280 tons.

South Korea's Cheomseongdae, a stone tower built under Queen Seondeok in the 600s, is Asia's oldest surviving what?

An observatory for watching the night sky, it may be the oldest of its kind surviving anywhere in the world, not just in Asia.

Which Seoul city gate, long the oldest wooden structure in the capital, was badly damaged by an arsonist in 2008?

Namdaemun, South Korea's first designated National Treasure, took years to restore after the blaze and reopened to the public in May 2013.

Sohn Kee-chung, competing under a Japanese name, became Korea's first Olympic champion at Berlin 1936 in which event?

The marathon victory became a rallying point at home: a Korean newspaper that erased the Japanese flag from his vest in its photograph was suspended for the better part of a year.

Which mountain range runs down South Korea's eastern coast and forms the main ridge of the peninsula?

The Taebaek Mountains fall steeply to the nearby coast but slope gently inland, so the range decides which way the peninsula's water drains.

The South Korean conglomerate Lotte is named after Charlotte, a character in a novel by which German writer?

Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther so impressed founder Shin Kyuk-ho that he took its heroine's name for a business that began by selling chewing gum in post-war Tokyo.

Which city south of Seoul is ringed by Hwaseong Fortress, built in the 1790s to honour an executed crown prince?

Suwon's walls were raised by King Jeongjo for his father, Crown Prince Sado, who had died locked in a chest on the orders of his own father, King Yeongjo.

Which South Korean city is home to both the world's largest car assembly plant and the world's largest shipyard?

Ulsan was a fishing port until the government named it a Special Industrial District in 1962, drawing an oil refinery, Hyundai's car plant and its shipyard.

Which river, the longest in South Korea, passes Daegu and drains the broad basin of the country's southeast?

The Nakdong became a front line in 1950, when its lower course formed the western edge of the last pocket of territory that UN forces were fighting to hold.

South Korea's KTX high-speed trains, which entered service in 2004, were based on a design from which country?

France's TGV beat German and Japanese bids for the contract, and the first KTX trains followed Alstom's TGV Réseau design, with some of them assembled in Korea.