Korea Map: The Two-Coast Peninsula, the Detached Japanese Islands, and the One Line That Decides Your Side

What Korea actually is

Direct answer. Korea is a vertical two-coast peninsula with a detached Japanese archipelago in the southeast corner and a single team spawn line at the y=1210 mark. Commit to the coast you spawn on before the countdown ends, hold one named nation plus its two nearest neighbours, and treat the three Japanese islands as a separate prize to win, not a third front to spread into. Read the 2-team split first, because the spawn line puts the South coast and the islands on one team and all of North Korea on the other.

Korea is the one regional map that turns the board on its side. It is a long narrow peninsula, one thousand eighty-eight pixels wide and two thousand one hundred and eighty eight pixels tall, with seven hundred and eighty-two thousand and forty-eight land tiles under the current manifest. Most of the game’s maps are wide; this one is deep, and the depth is the whole point. The real decision on Korea is not which nation to pick or which building to buy, it is which of the two opposing coasts you commit to before the countdown ends, and how you play the three axes of the board, the South coast and its city cluster, the detached Japanese archipelago in the southeast, and the North Korea inland opposite, so that a wrong pick stays recoverable instead of fatal. The map is narrow enough that a mistake on one front is a mistake on every front, and that is exactly why the framework below, which names the anchor and the two neighbours, is the difference between a lost match and a saved one. This guide assumes you already know the spawn pacing, the Port and Factory economics, and the Defence Post and Warship toolset; it only covers what Korea’s shape forces that the generic guides do not.

The version boundary is the v0.35 series, and the current formal release cursor is v0.35.6. Korea is a legacy regional map that predates the new v0.35 map batch, so its manifest geometry has not changed across the series; the width, height, land tiles, nation list, flags, and team spawn rectangles are stable from the first v0.35 release through v0.35.6. What v0.35 did change that affects Korea play is the national AI, which now retaliates harder, follows up on beachheads, and targets nuclear strikes more intelligently, and the nuclear territory annexation rule, which lets you seize a piece of territory that a nuke has severed from its owner’s main body. Those are mode-level changes, not map-shape changes, and the mode section below covers them in their own place. Every number in this guide, the 1,088 by 2,188 grid, the 782,048 land tiles, the 32-nation split into 17 South Korean, 12 North Korean, and 3 Japanese, and the y=1210 team split, is read directly from the manifest at commit f33d00490, and the v0.35.6 release is the release against which those numbers are verified.

The narrowness is the decision

The single most important fact about Korea is that it is narrow, and the narrowness is what makes the axis commitment a real decision instead of a coin flip. At two thousand one hundred and eighty-eight pixels tall and only one thousand eighty-eight pixels wide, Korea is the opposite of the wide island maps; you cannot hide behind a large board, and every front stays within reach of every other front across the peninsula. The seven hundred and eighty-two thousand and forty-eight land tiles put it in the lower part of the land-driven sizing spectrum that replaced the old flat cap. That means Korea rolls a smaller or mid-sized lobby than the massive land-heavy maps and a larger one than the water-heavy maps, and the named-nation density per land tile is high: thirty-two nations across a deep but narrow strip, so a large share of every match’s named nations are crowded into the middle third of the peninsula where the two coasts are closest.

The narrowness has three consequences that the framework below is built around. The first is that a wrong coast is not a small mistake; if you commit to the south coast and the north team reads the peninsula, the correction is not a lateral move, it is a push up the full length of the strip, and on a board this deep that push costs most of the game. The second is that the two coasts are not independent economies; the middle third of the peninsula connects them, so a player who owns the middle owns both coasts’ borders at the same time, which is why the middle is the first contested prize. The third is that the detached islands sit far enough to the southeast that they are a separate axis with their own sea route, and the narrowness means the islands are the only part of the board where you can open a second front without it bleeding into your main front. The three axes, the south coast, the north inland, and the islands, are the whole of Korea’s geography, and the framework below is a way to commit to one of them before the countdown ends.

The practical read is to treat the narrowness as a clock. On a wide map you have room to improvise which side you play; on Korea the room is the width of one peninsula, so the side you commit to at the countdown is the side you play for the whole match, and the only safe correction is the one that does not require a crossing of the middle third. That is why the framework names the anchor and the two neighbours before it names the coast, because the anchor is the point on the peninsula that is still yours if the coast turns against you, and the two neighbours are the flanks that keep the anchor defensible on both sides. Read the narrowness once, name the anchor, and the coast decides itself.

The nation layer: three axes, thirty-two nations

The 32 nations on Korea split into three axes, and the split is the map. The table below is the full nation layer, read from the manifest at commit f33d00490.

The 17 South Korean nations fill the bottom two-thirds of the peninsula and carry the dense city cluster: Seoul, Incheon, Busan, Daegu, Daejeon, Gwangju, and the surrounding provinces down to Ulsan on the east coast and Jeju off the south tip. This is the axis with the most Port access and the highest income ceiling, because the cities sit on both coasts and the middle third is wide enough to feed them. The 12 North Korean nations fill the top third and are mountained and inland, centred on Pyongyang with the Hamgyong, Pyongan, Hwanghae, Chagang, and Kangwon provinces around it; this is the axis with the least water and the most Factory spacing, and it is the axis that defends the mountained core rather than the coast. The 3 Japanese nations, Fukuoka, Saga, and Nagasaki, are the detached islands in the southeast corner; they are the only part of the board that is not connected to the peninsula by land, and they sit far enough from the mainland that they are a separate axis with their own sea route and their own economy.

The split matters because it is not even. The South has 17 named nations against the North’s 12, and the South’s named nations are the coastal cities that carry the income, so the South is the richer axis by construction and the North is the more defensible one by construction. The South’s named nations are not evenly spread either; the city cluster is densest on the west coast and in the middle third, so two players who spawn near Seoul or Incheon are fighting for the same high-income cities while the east-coast provinces near Ulsan are the cheaper, more defensible expansion for the player who wants to grow without a border war. The North’s 12 named nations are more even but more isolated; the mountained provinces mean a North player who takes Pyongyang can hold it against a small push but cannot feed a long war, so the North’s economy is a defence economy, not an expansion economy. That is the whole of the map’s political shape: the side with the cities has the money, the side with the mountains has the defence, and the islands are the separate prize that either side can take if it is willing to pay the crossing. The table is the map, and the rest of the guide is the decision it forces.

Decision framework: name the anchor before you name the coast

The framework is a sequence of three reads you run before the countdown ends, and the point of the sequence is that the coast is the last thing you decide, not the first. The first read is the axis: which of the three axes, the South coast, the North inland, or the islands, is the one your spawn lands you on. The second read is the anchor: the single named nation on that axis that is the strongest economy and the most defensible position, the coastal city with Port access if you are on the south, or the mountained core with Factory spacing if you are on the north. The third read is the two neighbours: the two named nations nearest the anchor, which are the flanks you must keep defensible and the directions you must not send units into until the anchor is safe on both sides.

The rule that the three reads collapse into is the one-sentence Korea rule: commit to the coast that your anchor sits on, hold the anchor plus the two neighbours, and do not send a unit to a third front until the anchor is defensible on both flanks. The rule works because the anchor is the point that is still yours if the coast turns against you, and the two neighbours are the flanks that keep the anchor from being enveloped. If you name the anchor first and the coast follows, a wrong coast is recoverable, because you still hold the anchor and the correction is a flank move, not a crossing of the middle third. If you name the coast first and the anchor follows, a wrong coast is fatal, because you have spread along the coast and the anchor is whatever is left, which is usually the weakest named nation on the board.

The framework also tells you when to break the rule. The rule says hold the anchor plus the two neighbours and do not open a third front, and the two cases where you break it are the two cases where the third front is the axis and not a flank. The first is when you are on the south and the islands are unclaimed, because the islands are the separate axis and taking them is a second economy, not a third front that bleeds into the main front. The second is when you are on the north and the middle third is the contested prize, because on the north the middle third is the only route to the south’s cities, and holding it is the north’s version of holding the anchor. In both cases the rule is the same, commit to the anchor and the two neighbours, and only when that is safe do you reach for the axis. The framework is the tool, and the scenarios below are the two ways the match plays out when you run it.

Scenario one: a mid-sized FFA on the south coast

Scenario one is the mid-sized FFA in which you spawn on the south coast, and the goal is to show the framework on the richer axis. You are one of the smaller lobbies Korea rolls, call it a fifty-player FFA, and you spawn on the east coast near Incheon or Busan, which puts you on the south axis and on the coast with the most Port access. The framework names the anchor as the coastal city nearest your spawn, Incheon or Busan, and the two neighbours as the provinces on either side of it, North Gyeongsang to the east and the west-coast provinces to the west. The first decision is the anchor: you take the named city, then you take the two named provinces, and only then do you reach for the middle third of the peninsula, which is the first contested prize because it connects the two coasts.

The numbers in this scenario are the ones that decide it. The south axis has 17 named nations, so a fifty-player FFA on the south is a fight for a large share of the named cities, and the income ceiling is set by how many of them you hold by the midgame. The middle third is the contested prize because it is the only route between the two coasts, and the player who owns it owns both borders at the same time. The islands are the second axis, and in this scenario the call is to win them, because you are on the south and the islands are the separate economy that does not bleed into your main front. The crossing to the islands is a sea route, and the cost is the Warship screen and the transport landing, so the scenario is: anchor the city, take the two provinces, hold the middle third, then send the second economy to the islands. The assumption is that you are not the strongest player on the south, because if you are, the scenario is the same except the islands are a bonus instead of a fight, and the anchor and the two neighbours are the same either way. The failure this scenario exists to prevent is the player who commits to the coast and spreads along the whole shore, because on a board this narrow that spread is the loss, and the anchor plus the two neighbours is the only way the south stays yours.

Scenario two: the 2-team split at y=1210

Scenario two is the 2-team lobby, which is the mode where Korea’s split becomes the game. The manifest’s team spawn rectangles are the top rectangle from y=0 to y=1210 and the bottom rectangle from y=1210 to y=2188, and the nation coordinates put the South coast and the three Japanese islands in the bottom rectangle and all of North Korea in the top rectangle. That means the 2-team split is not a coin flip between two random halves; it is a clean axis split in which one team gets the south coast and the islands, 20 named nations, and the other team gets the north inland, 12 named nations. You do not pick your side against 50 random players; you pick it against one coherent team that owns the whole north or the whole south.

The numbers in this scenario are the split itself. Team one has the south axis plus the islands, which is 20 named nations and the richest income, and team two has the north inland, which is 12 named nations and the mountained defence. The spawn line at y=1210 is the border of the match, and the entire middle third of the peninsula is the contested front between the two teams. The islands are on team one’s side, so in the 2-team split the south team has the second economy and the north team has the defence, and the match is a single continuous front on the peninsula with the islands as the secondary axis. The decision framework in team mode is the same concentration logic applied to the team’s half: the team anchors a set of named nations, holds the two neighbours, and concentrates on the middle third instead of spreading along the whole coast. The assumption is that your team is the south team, because if you are the north team the scenario is the same shape inverted, the defence becomes the front and the middle third becomes the only route to the south’s cities. The 20-to-12 split is the whole of the 2-team Korea match, and it is a structural imbalance, not a fairness question: team one has more named nations and the second economy, and team two has the defence and the shorter border to hold. The team version of the framework is the anchor, the two neighbours, and the axis, applied to the whole team rather than the single player, which means the team must name its anchor nation and its two neighbour nations the way the FFA player names them, and the team that names them first wins the middle third. The failure this scenario exists to prevent is the team that spreads across its whole half, because the middle third is the prize and the spread is the loss. The 2-team split at y=1210 is the one mode where the Korea decision is the least personal and the most structural, and the player who can read the 20-to-12 split knows which side of the peninsula the match is decided on.

Failure modes and opponent counterplay

The failure modes on Korea are three, and they are all the same failure with a different name, the failure of committing to a coast before you commit to an anchor. The first is the coast commitment, which is the player who picks the south because it looks rich and spreads along the whole shore, and the counter is the anchor plus the two neighbours, which is the only shape that keeps the south defensible on both flanks. The reason the coast commitment is so common is that the south coast looks like the richest coast on the board and the player wants the income, but the income only exists if you still hold the anchor, and spreading along the shore gives the income away to the neighbour while you own the weaker named nations. The second is the island neglect, which is the player on the south who treats the three Japanese islands as irrelevant because they are detached, when in fact they are the separate second economy and the first prize of the player who reads the board, and the counter is the axis rule, which is to name the islands as the second economy and plan the crossing before the countdown ends. The islands are easy to neglect because they are the small part of the board, three named nations against the seventeen of the south, and the crossing looks expensive, but the second economy is the prize that wins the match when both players hold the mainland. The third is the overextension, which is the player who holds the middle third and reaches for the islands at the same time, and the counter is the two-neighbour rule, which is to keep the two flanks safe before the second front is open. The overextension is the failure that looks most like a win in the lobby, because the player who holds the middle third and the islands controls the whole board, but it is the most fragile shape on a narrow peninsula, because the two flanks are the two sides the enemy can hit while you are busy on the islands.

The opponent counterplay that the three failures feed is the axis grab, which is the player or team that takes the contested axis before you do. On the south the axis grab is the player who takes the middle third first, because the middle third is the only route between the coasts and the player who owns it owns both borders. On the north the axis grab is the player who takes the mountained core first, because the core is the defence and the player who owns it owns the top third. On the islands the axis grab is the player who crosses first, because the islands are the separate economy and the player who wins the crossing owns the second axis. The counter to the axis grab is the same framework run one minute earlier, which is to name the anchor and the two neighbours in the lobby so the axis is already on your plan when the countdown ends. The three failures and the three axis grabs are the whole of Korea’s tactical content, and the player who can run the framework is the player who wins the peninsula.

Mode and map adjustments

The mode you are playing changes the Korea read in a small number of ways, and the map itself changes the mode reading in a few more. The first mode adjustment is the team split, which is the 2-team split at y=1210 that puts the south and the islands on one team and the north on the other, and the decision framework changes from which side you pick to how the team divides its side. In a larger team lobby the team has more players per named nation, so the team can cover more of its half and the spread failure is less likely; in a smaller team lobby the team has fewer players per named nation, so the team concentrates on the middle third and the island axis. The team framework is the same concentration logic as the FFA, applied to the team’s half of the board.

The second mode adjustment is the v0.35 national AI, which now retaliates harder against the player who pulls ahead, follows up on beachheads, and targets nuclear strikes more intelligently. On Korea the national AI change means the detached islands are a more contested prize, because the AI on the island side follows up on a landing and the AI on the mainland side retaliates harder if you pull ahead, so the island axis is the axis where the v0.35 AI is most active. The third mode adjustment is the nuclear territory annexation rule, which lets you seize a piece of territory that a nuke has severed from its owner’s main body. On Korea the annexation rule means a nuke that severs a north Korean nation from the rest of the peninsula makes that nation a separate piece you can annex, which changes how you play the border and makes the middle third a nuclear target as well as a land prize.

The fourth mode adjustment is the Doomsday Clock, if it is active. The Doomsday reading on Korea is the same as on any map, which is that the under-forty-percent side is fighting to survive the wave, but the Korea reading is that the under side is usually the team without the islands, because the team without the islands is the team without the second economy. The Doomsday reading is the same as the concentration reading, which is that the side with the islands is the side that can keep expanding to the last economy, so the under side has to force the island side to spend units on the screen. The map adjustment is the same as the mode adjustment, because the narrow board is the mode on this peninsula, and the mode changes the reading of the team split, the national AI, the annexation rule, and the Doomsday Clock. The player who can read both the mode and the map is the player who plays Korea correctly, and the peninsula is the one that decides the match.

What to take into your next match

The single takeaway from Korea is that the board is narrow and the decision is the axis, and the axis is decided by the anchor. The map is one thousand eighty-eight pixels wide and two thousand one hundred and eighty-eight pixels tall with seven hundred and eighty two thousand and forty-eight land tiles and thirty-two named nations, and the match is decided by which of the two coasts you commit to before the countdown ends. The decision framework is the tool, which is to read the axis, name the anchor, name the two neighbours, and commit to the coast that the anchor sits on, and the scenarios are the two ways the match plays out, the mid-sized FFA on the south coast and the 2-team split at y=1210. The failure modes are the three ways the match is lost, the coast commitment, the island neglect, and the overextension, and the counterplay is the one way the opponent wins, the axis grab. The mode and map adjustments are the last piece, which is that the mode changes how the team divides its side and how the national AI, the annexation rule, and the Doomsday Clock read, and the map changes where the two coasts and the islands are.

For the broader systems this opening feeds into, the map strategy guide covers connected land and water networks on any board, the island defense guide covers how to screen the island crossing and when a disconnected sea route means you should fall back to land, the naval stalemate and blockade guide covers how to hold a crossing when the enemy is trying to deny it, the tall versus wide guide covers when a safe economy should take more land, and the team economy space guide covers how teammates reserve the shared corridors on the 2-team split. Bring those into the same decision and the Korea opening stops being a guess about which coast looks central and becomes a plan about which coast, which anchor, which two neighbours, and which axis you are committing to before the countdown ends, which is the only time the whole thing is still in your hands. The board is narrow enough that a wrong coast is recoverable for a short while, but the middle third makes the correction a crossing, and crossings cost time and a unit you may not be able to afford if you have already burned your early game on a bad start, which is why the players who win on this map are usually the ones who named the anchor and the two neighbours and committed to the coast the anchor sat on, rather than the ones who picked the familiar coast by instinct and then had to improvise the crossing.