Half the republic crowds into the world’s ninth metro
South Korea, the Republic of Korea on the southern Korean Peninsula, counts about 52 million people—half in the Seoul metropolitan area, the world’s ninth-most populous metro—between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, facing North Korea across the DMZ.
Busan, Daegu and Incheon are the next-largest cities after Seoul. The economy ranks 14th in the world, and the country is the ninth-largest exporter. Only one country has more people in uniform, counting soldiers and paramilitaries together, than its conscripted forces. Life expectancy is among the longest on Earth even as fertility sits among the lowest, and since about 2000 its music, dramas and films have spread worldwide as the Korean Wave.
Founding myth dates Gojoseon to 2333 BC under the legendary Dangun. In 108 BC the Han dynasty installed commanderies in the north, and Lelang lasted until Goguryeo took it in 313. Goguryeo, the largest of the Three Kingdoms, reportedly defeated a Sui army said to exceed a million men; Baekje, a seafaring power dubbed the Phoenicia of East Asia, helped carry Buddhism and continental culture to Japan; and little Silla, allied with Tang China, unified most of the peninsula in 676. Its capital, Gyeongju, grew into the world's fourth-largest city.
Wang Geon founded Goryeo in 936 and welcomed Balhae's last crown prince, uniting both heirs of Goguryeo. Goryeo invented metal movable type, completed the Tripitaka Koreana and had 12 universities by 1100. Arab and Persian traders' pronunciation of Goryeo gave the world the name Korea. The Joseon dynasty followed from 1392, and in 1897 King Gojong proclaimed the Korean Empire, annexed by Japan in 1910.
The Korean War, triggered in 1950, ended in a 1953 armistice with no peace treaty and left three million Koreans dead. Through dictatorships, coups and uprisings the economy soared, making the South one of the Four Asian Tigers, and mass protests in June 1987 finally brought democracy and today's Sixth Republic.
Source: South Korea
