South Korea

South Korea is a country in East Asia. It sits on the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, a finger of land that sticks out from the Asian mainland between China and Japan. Its full name is the Republic of Korea. The capital is Seoul, a huge city of about 10 million people. About 52 million people live in the country as a whole.

South Korea is a little smaller than the state of Indiana. Most of the land is covered in hills and mountains. Because farming is hard in the hills, most people live crowded together in the lowlands along the coasts and rivers. Seoul alone holds about one in every five South Koreans.

The country has four clear seasons. Summers are hot and rainy, with a monsoon season in July. Winters are cold and dry, with snow in the north. Spring brings pink and white cherry blossoms that people travel long distances to see.

Korea was one country for most of its history. Then came the Korean War, which began in 1950. When the war ended in 1953, the peninsula was split into two countries. North Korea became a strict communist state. South Korea became a democracy where people vote for their leaders. The two countries are still separated by a strip of land called the DMZ, short for Demilitarized Zone. No peace treaty was ever signed, so technically the war never ended.

In 1960, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. Today it is one of the richest. In about 60 years, it built huge companies like Samsung, Hyundai, and LG that sell phones, cars, and TVs all over the world. This fast change is sometimes called the "Miracle on the Han River," after the river that flows through Seoul.

South Korean culture has become popular around the world. This wave is nicknamed Hallyu, which means "Korean Wave." It includes K-pop music groups like BTS and BLACKPINK, Korean TV shows, and movies like Parasite, which in 2020 became the first non-English film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Korean food, like kimchi (spicy fermented cabbage) and Korean barbecue, has spread to cities all over the world.

The country also uses one of the most unusual writing systems on Earth. It is called Hangul. A king named Sejong the Great invented it in the 1440s so that ordinary people, not just scholars, could learn to read. Most alphabets grew slowly over centuries. Hangul was designed on purpose, by one person, in a few years.