Countries
Key facts
- Capital
- Seoul
- Region
- Asia, Eastern Asia
- Population
- 51,684,564 (2025)
- Area
- 98,480 km²
- Currency
- South Korean won (KRW)
- Languages
- Korean, English
- Calling code
- +82
- Internet domain
- .kr, .한국
- ISO codes
- KR, KOR, 410
- Time zone
- UTC+9:00
- United Nations
- Member state
- Postal code pattern
- ##### (# = digit, @ = letter)
Land and position
South Korea covers about 98,480 square kilometres. By area it ranks 110th among the 250 countries and territories on this site. It is a little smaller than Iceland and a little larger than Hungary. It shares a land border with 1 neighbour: North Korea. Its centre lies at about 37° north, 128° east, in the northern hemisphere.
Neighbours
People
About 51.7 million people live in South Korea (World Bank, 2025). That makes it the 29th most populous of the 246 places on this site with a figure, with about 0.63 percent of the world's people. On average there are 525 people to each square kilometre. About 81 percent of people live in towns and cities (World Bank, 2025). A baby born there can expect to live about 84 years (World Bank, 2024). Languages listed for it: Korean, English. A person from South Korea is called South Korean.
Money and economy
The currency is the South Korean won (code KRW, symbol ₩). The World Bank puts the size of its economy (GDP) at about US$ 1.87 trillion (2025), which is about US$ 36,227 for each person (2025).
Time
South Korea uses one time zone, UTC+9:00 (Asia/Seoul). Clocks stay the same all year: there is no daylight saving time.
Time now: loading
Offsets are for January 2026. See Time Zones for a converter.
Largest cities
| City | People |
|---|---|
| Seoul | 10,349,312 |
| Busan | 3,285,147 |
| Incheon | 3,015,482 |
| Daegu | 2,365,523 |
| Daejeon | 1,441,203 |
| Gwangju | 1,401,235 |
City figures are from GeoNames and count the city itself, not the wider urban area. They can be some years old, so use them to see the order of size.
More in Eastern Asia
China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, Taiwan. See the whole region.
Figures were collected on 11 November 2026 from the World Bank, GeoNames and the open countries data set. See About and data sources. Borders and names follow those sources and do not express any view on disputed territory.