South Korea

Half of a peninsula that went from among the poorest countries on earth to among the richest in about forty years. Korea was unified under Silla in 668 and governed by the Joseon dynasty from 1392 for over five centuries, developing the hangul alphabet in 1443 - a writing system designed deliberately rather than inherited, and unusually easy to learn by design. Japan annexed the country in 1910 and ruled it until 1945, banning the language in schools and conscripting labour and women for military brothels, a grievance still active in relations between the two. The United States and the Soviet Union divided the peninsula at the thirty-eighth parallel in 1945, and the war from 1950 to 1953 killed perhaps three million people and ended in an armistice rather than a treaty, so the war is technically unfinished. Park Chung-hee's authoritarian government from 1961 drove industrialisation through the chaebol conglomerates. Mass protest brought democracy in 1987, and presidents have since been impeached and imprisoned with some regularity. Samsung, Hyundai and LG are Korean. The birth rate is the lowest in the world. Seoul holds half the population. The country has about fifty-two million people in a hundred thousand square kilometres. Hangul day is a public holiday celebrating the alphabet itself. The demilitarised zone with the north is among the most heavily fortified borders in the world and has become an accidental nature reserve. Korean film and music have become major exports. Household internet speeds are among the fastest anywhere. Around half the population carries one of five surnames.

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