South Korea’s flag features a red-and-blue yin-yang symbol surrounded by four black trigrams.
Known as the Taegeukgi, the flag has a white background, a central taegeuk, and four trigrams placed near its corners. The taegeuk represents the interaction and balance of opposing forces, traditionally described as yin and yang. The white field is associated with peace and purity in Korean culture.
The four trigrams come from the Chinese classic I Ching and are called geon, gon, gam, and ri in Korean. They symbolize ideas including heaven, earth, water, and fire, as well as the cardinal directions and seasons. Their arrangement expresses movement, balance, and harmony.
The design developed from earlier Korean flags and was adopted as South Korea’s national flag in 1948, with its current geometric specifications standardized later. A common mix-up is to call the central symbol simply a yin-yang symbol; in Korean flag terminology, it is more specifically a taegeuk, while the surrounding marks are trigrams, not writing or decorative bars.