South Korea

South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, occupies the southern part of the Korean Peninsula in East Asia, separated from North Korea by the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with Seoul as its capital and largest city. Following Japan's surrender in the Second World War, Korea was divided into occupation zones, and the Republic of Korea was established in the south in August 1948, a month before the north's Democratic People's Republic of Korea; North Korea's 1950 invasion of the south triggered the Korean War, a major Cold War conflict that killed about three million people and ended in 1953 with an armistice but no peace treaty. South Korea operates today as a unitary presidential republic under its 1987 constitution, with a unicameral National Assembly, after the June Democratic Struggle of that year ended authoritarian rule and established the current Sixth Republic. Between 1962 and 1994 the country achieved the Miracle on the Han River, averaging ten percent annual economic growth through export-driven development, and its roughly 52 million people, about half concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area, now live in one of Asia's most advanced democracies.