South Korea Flag

Description

South Korea is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. The name Korea is derived from Goguryeo which was one of the great powers in East Asia during its time, ruling most of the Korean Peninsula, Manchuria, parts of the Russian Far East and Inner Mongolia under Gwanggaeto the Great. Its capital, Seoul, is a major global city and half of South Korea’s over 51 million people live in the Seoul Capital Area, the fourth largest metropolitan economy in the world.

The flag of South Korea, also known as the Taegukgi (also spelt as Taegeukgi, lit. ”Taegeuk flag”), has three parts: a white rectangular background, a red and blue Taegeuk in its centre, and four black trigrams one toward each corner. The first pattern of Taegukgi was made by Kojong. Flags similar to the current Taegeukgi were used as the national flags of Korea by the Joseon dynasty, the Korean Empire, and the Korean exile government during Japanese rule. It has continued to be used as a national flag even after the establishment of the South Korean state on August 15, 1948. The flag’s background is white, a traditional colour in Korean culture. White was common in the daily attire of 19th-century Koreans, and it still appears in contemporary versions of traditional Korean garments, such as the hanbok. The colour represents peace and purity. The circle in the middle represents balance in the universe. The red half represents positive cosmic forces, and the blue half represents the opposing negative cosmic forces. Together, the trigrams represent movement and harmony as fundamental principles. Each trigram represents one of the four classical elements, as described below: