In a quirk of geopolitical paperwork, South Korea’s constitution still declares the entire Korean Peninsula—including North Korea—as its sovereign territory, divided into five northern provinces that exist more on paper than in practice. This legal fiction, rooted in the aftermath of the 1948 division, means that according to South Korean law, Pyongyang isn’t the capital of a separate nation but a city in the “Northern Section” of Gyeonggi Province. The administrative map of South Korea technically includes regions like North Hamgyong and South Pyongan, even though those areas have been under Kim dynasty rule for over 70 years.
The claim traces back to South Korea’s founding constitution, which asserts the Republic of Korea (ROK) as the sole legitimate government of “all Korea.” After the Korean War ended in a stalemate, neither side recognized the other’s sovereignty. While North Korea drafted its own constitution declaring independence, South Korea doubled down, retaining the pre-division provincial boundaries. This creates bureaucratic absurdities: weather forecasts include “northern regions” no South Korean can visit, and school textbooks teach geography as if the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is just a temporary line.
The five northern provinces—Hwanghae, Hamgyong, Pyeongan, Gangwon, and Gyeonggi (split into North/South)—exist today as ghost jurisdictions. South Korea’s government even appoints governors for these provinces, though their duties are largely ceremonial, involving refugee advocacy or symbolic events. One former “governor” of North Hamgyong likened his role to “managing a phantom theme park—no visitors, but plenty of maps.”
This legal stance has real-world ripple effects. South Korean companies must navigate laws restricting trade with the “northern provinces,” and defectors from the North are technically not immigrants but “residents returning to the ROK.” The Ministry of Unification, tasked with eventual reunification, operates under the premise that the two Koreas are “in a special interim relationship,” not separate states. Diplomatically, it leads to awkwardness: when a South Korean official refers to “our northern territories,” they’re not discussing real estate, but a 70-year-old legal daydream.
The irony isn’t lost on citizens. Younger generations, raised in a globalized world, often find the constitutional claim as surreal as a K-drama plot twist. Social media jokes about “applying for a visa to visit my own country” abound, while older conservatives cling to the hope of reunification—or at least a paperwork win.
The policy isn’t without critics. Some argue it hampers pragmatic diplomacy by forcing South Korea to pretend the North’s government doesn’t exist. Others see it as a harmless relic, like keeping a childhood blanket for comfort. Meanwhile, North Korea, unsurprisingly, ignores the entire charade, treating the ROK as a “puppet regime” in its own constitution.
So, why keep up the pretense? Officially, it’s about preserving the legal framework for reunification. Unofficially, it’s a blend of hope, pride, and bureaucratic inertia. As one Seoul bureaucrat quipped, “Updating the constitution would require agreeing on what to call the North. And if we did that, we’d have to rewrite all the maps—do you know how many pens that would take?”
In the end, South Korea’s northern provinces remain a geopolitical Schrodinger’s cat: both part of the nation and utterly separate. Until the day the DMZ transforms from a fortified border to a dotted line on a map, the five provinces will stay frozen in legal limbo—a reminder that sometimes, politics is less about reality and more about stubbornly refusing to hit “delete” on a very old file.
