King Sejong the Great, who created the Korean alphabet in the 1440s; Admiral Yi Sun-sin, who never lost a sea battle against the Japanese in the 1590s; the independence activist Yu Gwan-sun; Kim Dae-jung, winner of the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize; the director Bong Joon Ho, whose Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture; the Nobel-winning novelist Han Kang; and the pop group BTS are among the most famous people from South Korea. The first three are national symbols whose statues, holidays and memorials shape daily life in the country; the rest carried its name abroad in film, books, music, diplomacy and sport. This guide starts with the nation-makers and ends with the people the world knows today.
Sejong the Great and Yi Sun-sin, the Joseon Figures on Gwanghwamun Square
Two statues dominate Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, in front of Gyeongbokgung Palace, and together they show who South Koreans regard as the founders of their national identity. The seated golden figure is Sejong the Great (1397–1450), fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, who ruled from 1418 until his death. His court revealed a new alphabet in 1443, and in 1446 the book Hunminjeongeum, “The Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People”, formally introduced it. That alphabet, now called Hangul, gradually displaced difficult Chinese characters in everyday writing and is celebrated every 9 October as Hangul Day, a national holiday. The history of the script, and where Korean is spoken today, is covered in our guide to the geography of the Korean language.
Sejong’s reign was also a period of science. In 1420 he re-established the Hall of Worthies, a royal research institute, and his reign saw more accurate calendars, tax reform and new instruments for farmers. Jang Yeong-sil (dates uncertain; active in the 1420s–1440s) was born a nobi, a person of the lowest hereditary status, but Sejong gave him a post at court. With the crown prince and the scientist Yi Chon he produced the chugugi rain gauge in 1441, two centuries before a comparable instrument appeared in Europe, as well as water gauges and clocks placed around Gyeongbokgung.
The standing bronze figure in front of Sejong is Yi Sun-sin (1545–1598), born in Hanseong, today’s Seoul. As a naval commander during the Imjin War, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s armies invaded Korea from 1592, he fought at least 23 naval battles and is generally accepted to have won all of them, using armoured turtle ships to lead his attacks. At the Battle of Myeongnyang in 1597 his 13 ships defeated a Japanese fleet of at least 133. He was killed by a bullet at the Battle of Noryang, the last major battle of the war, on 16 December 1598.
Yu Gwan-sun, An Jung-geun and Kim Ku: Resisting Japanese Rule, 1905–1945
Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, and the people most honoured in South Korea for the next 35 years are those who resisted. An Jung-geun (1879–1910) shot Itō Hirobumi, the former Japanese prime minister and Resident-General of Korea, at Harbin station in China in 1909, and was executed at Lüshun prison in 1910. He is honoured as a martyr in both Koreas and in China, while the Japanese government regards him as a terrorist.
Yu Gwan-sun (1902–1920) was born near Cheonan in South Chungcheong Province. When her school in Seoul, Ewha, was closed during the March First Movement of 1919, she went home and helped organise demonstrations in the surrounding towns. She was arrested and sentenced at Seodaemun Prison in Seoul, and died in prison on 28 September 1920 from injuries caused by torture and beatings. She has become the best-known symbol of the movement. Kim Ku (1876–1949), born in Haeju in what is now North Korea, joined the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai in 1919 and headed it from 1926 to 1927 and again from 1940 to 1945. After liberation he campaigned against the division of the peninsula, and he was assassinated in 1949 by the army officer Ahn Doo-hee.
Syngman Rhee, Park Chung Hee and Kim Dae-jung: Presidents of the Republic
The Republic of Korea was founded in 1948 in the south of the divided peninsula, and three of its presidents left the deepest marks. Syngman Rhee (1875–1965), born in Hwanghae Province, had spent decades in exile in the United States. He became the first president in 1948, led the country through the Korean War, and resigned in 1960 after the student-led April Revolution, flying into exile in Hawaii.
Park Chung Hee (1917–1979), born in Gumi, seized power in the May 16 coup of 1961 and was president from 1962 until 1979. His economic reforms began the rapid industrial growth known as the Miracle on the Han River, while his 1972 Yushin Constitution made his rule openly authoritarian. He was assassinated in 1979 by Kim Jae-gyu, the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.
Kim Dae-jung (1924–2009), born on the island of Hauido off the south-west coast near Mokpo, was the opposition leader whom the military governments imprisoned, exiled and sentenced to death. He lost the presidential elections of 1971, 1987 and 1992 before winning in 1997. As president from 1998 to 2003 he pursued the Sunshine Policy of détente with the North, held the first inter-Korean summit with Kim Jong Il in June 2000, and that year became the first South Korean to receive a Nobel Prize. The line that still divides the peninsula is described in our guide to the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
Lee Byung-chul and Chung Ju-yung: The Founders of Samsung and Hyundai
South Korea’s industrial rise is personified by two businessmen. Lee Byung-chul (1910–1987), born in Uiryeong County in South Gyeongsang Province, set up a trucking and real-estate business in Daegu on 1 March 1938 and named it Samsung Trading Co. It grew into the Samsung Group, the country’s largest chaebol, or family-run conglomerate. In 1969 Lee added an electronics arm; by 1970 Samsung Electronics Manufacturing had 45 employees making only household electronics, the forerunner of today’s Samsung Electronics. Chung Ju-yung (1915–2001) was born into a poor family in Tongchon County, now in North Korea, and after liberation founded Hyundai Auto Service and Hyundai Construction in Seoul in 1946. From these he built the Hyundai Group, which expanded into cars, shipbuilding and heavy industry. In 1972 he founded Hyundai Shipbuilding & Heavy Industries with its headquarters at a new shipyard in Ulsan, and in 1976 his company launched the Hyundai Pony, South Korea’s first mass-produced and exported car.
Ban Ki-moon, Bong Joon Ho, Han Kang, BTS and Kim Yuna: Korea’s Name Abroad
The diplomat Ban Ki-moon (born 1944) grew up in Chungju in North Chungcheong Province and served as foreign minister from 2004 to 2006. The UN General Assembly elected him the eighth Secretary-General in October 2006, and he held the post from 2007 to 2016. The artist Nam June Paik (1932–2006), born in Seoul, joined the Fluxus group in West Germany and moved to New York in 1964; he is regarded as the founder of video art, and his installation TV Buddha shows a Buddha statue watching its own live image on a closed-circuit television.
Korean film and literature reached new audiences in the 2010s and 2020s. Bong Joon Ho (born 1969) made Memories of Murder (2003), The Host (2006) and Snowpiercer (2013) before Parasite won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019, a first for a South Korean film. At the 2020 Academy Awards it won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and became the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture. The actress Youn Yuh-jung (born 1947) became the first Korean actress to win an Academy Award, as Best Supporting Actress for Minari. The novelist Han Kang (born 1970 in Gwangju) won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for The Vegetarian, the first Korean-language novel to do so, and in 2024 became the first Asian woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In music, BTS, the seven-member group of Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V and Jung Kook, debuted in 2013. In 2020 “Dynamite” made them the first all-South Korean act to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Sport has produced its own record-breakers. Pak Se-ri (born 1977) won two majors in her 1998 rookie season, the McDonald’s LPGA Championship and the US Women’s Open, becoming at 20 the youngest-ever winner of the latter; she entered the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2007. Kim Yuna (born 1990) won Olympic gold in women’s figure skating at Vancouver in 2010, took world titles in 2009 and 2013, broke world records 11 times, and never finished off the podium in her competitive career.
The footballer Son Heung-min (born 1992 in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province) left for Hamburg at 16, moved to Tottenham Hotspur in 2015, and in 2021–22 shared the Premier League Golden Boot with Mohamed Salah on 23 goals, the first Asian player to win it. His solo goal against Burnley in 2019–20 earned the FIFA Puskás Award, and in 2025 he led Spurs to the UEFA Europa League title before joining Los Angeles FC in Major League Soccer. Many of these careers began in the capital, which is profiled in our guide to Seoul, the capital of South Korea.