South Korea 🇰🇷

South Korea is a country in Eastern Asia, one of the 8 entries this site files under that subregion. Its full official name is Republic of Korea. Government sits in Seoul.

The population is about 51.8 million, placing it 29th of 250 by population — between Colombia above it and Sudan below. Within Eastern Asia alone it is the 5th largest of 8 and the 3rd most populous.

The land area is 100,210 km², which ranks it 110th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Iceland and just ahead of Hungary. That makes it almost exactly the same size as Iceland.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 516 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

Officially it is monolingual: Korean. It shares that with North Korea.

Someone from South Korea is a South Korean.

Against Asia as a whole it is the 13th most populous of 50 entries, and it accounts for 3.1% of everyone living in Eastern Asia.

Put next to every other entry on this site, South Korea ranks 110th of 250 by area and 29th by population. That works out at 0.067% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 0.64% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of South Korea in the size ordering are Iceland at 103,000 km² and Hungary at 93,028 km², against South Korea's 100,210 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. South Korea averages 516 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 26th of the 248 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Asia and South Korea sits 3rd of 8 by population and 5th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Japan just above and North Korea just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

China is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Eastern Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇯🇵 Japan
• 🇰🇵 North Korea
• 🇨🇳 China

Its reference point sits at 37.0° north and 127.5° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 4,119 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include the United States, Türkiye and Syria.

It borders 1 neighbour: North Korea.

It has both a coastline and land borders, which is the most common arrangement of all.

The South Korean won (KRW) is used only in South Korea among the 250 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Korean is listed for 2 entries here, South Korea among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Money there is the South Korean won (₩, KRW). It is issued for South Korea alone.

Websites there use the .kr domain. Calls from overseas start with +82. Standard country codes: kr and KOR.

Seoul is the city to remember for this country.

South Korea is one of the 193 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.