The Korean flag is called taegeukgi (pronounced teh-GUK-key). The colors of the flag are red, blue, and black on a white background. The flag stands for the three components of a nation: the land (the white background), the people (the red and blue circle), and the government (the four sets of black bars or trigrams).
The four sagwe (bars) each have a specific meaning: starting from the top left, moving clockwise, the geon bars symbolize air/south/summer; the gam bars symbolize water/west/autumn; the gon bars symbolize Earth/north/winter; and the ri bars symbolize fire/east/spring.
The circle in the middle, divided equally into a blue portion below and a red portion above, represents the dual cosmic forces of Yin (blue) and Yang (red). It symbolizes universal harmony, in which the negative (or passive) and the positive (or active) form the whole.