East Asia · Empire, war and the modern states
South Korea
drawn on the map 1948–2024
The Republic of Korea (ROK) was founded on 15 August 1948 under Syngman Rhee south of the 38th parallel. Devastated by the Korean War, it endured authoritarian rule (Rhee, then Park Chung-hee's developmental dictatorship) during which it achieved the "Miracle on the Han River" industrialization.
- Shown on the map
- 1948–2024
- Peak area
- 106k km²
- Region
- East Asia
Overview
The Republic of Korea (ROK) was founded on 15 August 1948 under Syngman Rhee south of the 38th parallel. Devastated by the Korean War, it endured authoritarian rule (Rhee, then Park Chung-hee's developmental dictatorship) during which it achieved the "Miracle on the Han River" industrialization. Democratization came in 1987. Today South Korea is a wealthy, high-tech liberal democracy and major cultural exporter (the "Korean Wave").
Common questions
- What was South Korea?
- The Republic of Korea (ROK) was founded on 15 August 1948 under Syngman Rhee south of the 38th parallel. Devastated by the Korean War, it endured authoritarian rule (Rhee, then Park Chung-hee's developmental dictatorship) during which it achieved the "Miracle on the Han River" industrialization.
- When is South Korea shown on the map?
- The border data draws South Korea 1948–2024. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was South Korea?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, South Korea covered about 106,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia article for each polity as the basis of these profiles, supplemented by Encyclopaedia Britannica, chinaknowledge.de, the World History Encyclopedia, museum and university sources, and the academic works it lists. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — South Korea en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
See South Korea in its world
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