North Korea is the northern part of a mountainous peninsula of about 220,000 square kilometres that reaches south from the Manchurian plains between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, with the Amnok (Yalu) and Tumen rivers marking its northern edge, Mount Baekdu at its head and some three thousand islands off its coasts. Hunters lived here at least 40,000 years ago, rice farmers raised dolmens in the first millennium BCE, and the early states were not confined to the peninsula: Gojoseon and Goguryeo ruled across southern Manchuria, and Balhae later held much of it. Early Korea was a world of parallel kingdoms, among them Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla and the Gaya confederacy.

Silla united most of the peninsula in 668 to 676 with Tang help, and Goryeo (918–1392) gave the country its name in the West, its celadon and its printing. Joseon, founded in 1392, ruled for five centuries under a Confucian monarchy, created Hangul in the 1440s, survived the Japanese invasions of 1592 to 1598 and the Manchu invasions of 1627 and 1636, and was opened to the world by force from 1876. The Korean Empire of 1897 was made a protectorate in 1905 and annexed by Japan in 1910. Koreans resisted in the March First Movement of 1919 and in exile until liberation in August 1945.

Liberation brought division at the 38th parallel, Soviet occupation of the north, then two states in 1948 and the Korean War of 1950 to 1953, which ended in an armistice and never in a peace treaty. The Democratic People's Republic became a hereditary one-party state under the Kim family, survived a famine and built nuclear weapons. Until 1945 this is the history of the whole peninsula, shared with History of South Korea.

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