Talk:Flag of North Korea

My understanding is the text being circulated as the revised constitution of the DPRK was supposedly leaked to the South Korean unification ministry and was not officially published by the North Korean side. This follows given that the 2019 revisions were not made publicly accessible either.

However, I think a document published by the DPRK government would be preferable. For example, the two hostile states theory and North Korea's abandonment of Korean reunification had been reported since at least 2023, but this was not in any official publication until 2025's factbook by the Foreign Languages Publishing House. Yue🌙 (talk) 21:08, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

@Yue: I updated Template:Country data North Korea before seeing this. Feel free to undo my change. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 05:55, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree that an official source would be preferable. LoneShadow42 (talk) 19:48, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Governments that care usually have flag standards written in a document, usually the constitution or a flag law. In the case of North Korea, it is in the constitution, but a verified version of the recent amendments has not been published yet. Using a recent photograph in the absence of any published work as the source for a reproduction is original research and bad practice because governments that care routinely alter flag designs and dimensions for different displays.

For example, the middle bar of the French flag is often thinner when placed behind government officials because normal dimensions would make the tricolour hard to fully see (example). However, if we took the physical flag in that screengrab as an accurate design, then the French flag would look like this.

We don't know why the North Korean flag in specific screengrabs, specific displays has a thicker white stripe or different shades of colour, but it could be for a variety of reasons, including to make the flag clearer in a certain size or format. What we do know is North Korea has one of the "governments that care" and a standard construction for its flag, which neither the source file (File:Flag of North Korea (March 2026-).svg) nor the article cites. Reproductions by Twitter users and Wikipedians based on what they observe in different photographs are original, unreliably sourced productions.

Without any official documentation, the change in flag design and ratios are just rumoured; the supposed amendments floating around were alleged leaks to the South Korean government. Some of the changes, such as the thickness of the white stripes, are also assumed because of the recent leaks. For example, North Korean sports teams have posed with thicker-white-striped flags for years, presumably because it looks clearer from afar and on camera. Some examples from 2024 and from 2025. This does not mean that at any point, the standard flag design was changed for the white stripe; it means the North Korean government is aware the flag can look unclear in certain formats and there are likely adjustments made on an ad hoc basis. North Korea is so aware of this problem that the (original?) 1:2 ratio was objected to when the adoption of the flag was first being discussed. Yue🌙 (talk) 17:25, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

@NeoSyria: Do you have a source that is not your interpretation of a physical flag shown in a photograph? Yue🌙 (talk) 17:03, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm sure that there are other sources without the thickened stripes but they're likely pre-2026 photographs. ^NeoSyria\Freedoxm (talk · contribs) 17:26, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

There is a new image showing the 20:33 flag with the thickened stripes: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/06/02/Kim-Jong-Un-honors-Naegohyang-womens-FC-soccer-champions/9071780395528/ ^NeoSyria\Freedoxm (talk · contribs) 20:53, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

@NeoSyria: My point is that there are pre-2026 photographs of physical North Korean flag with thickened stripes, hence why basing official changes on just photographs of physical flags is original research. Editors' interpretations of photographs are not reliable sources. Yue🌙 (talk) 19:54, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

@Tongilmujigae: Using your own interpretations of photographs is WP:OR. Even then I'm not sure what you're seeing; if you take this photograph for example from the KCNA source you provided in your edit summary, the stripes are clearly not as thick as depicted in File:Flag of North Korea (March 2026-).svg. Yue🌙 (talk) 06:33, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

In my edit I mentioned that the thicker white stripe ratios are unofficial and that File:Flag of North Korea(March 2026-).svg is only an example vector which is closer in looks to the new official North Korean flag (which we can see in the attributed image archives or Korean Central News Agency), compared to File:Flag of North Korea(20-33).svg. Tongilmujigae (talk) 09:58, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Edit : I was meant to show this flag while talking about the March 2026 vector. Tongilmujigae (talk) 10:00, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Right, so original research because you didn't cite a reliable source for your personal observation and claim that the "white stripes appear thickened though not official but commonly used by the North Korean government since March 2026."

To put it out another way: your claim that this photograph shows thicker stripes on the flag is your personal belief. It is my personal belief that the photograph doesn't show thicker stripes and the stripes look about the same as the existing SVG file(s). So now what? Is Wikipedia supposed to take your word in particular as authoritative and decisive? Wikipedia is built on reliable sources, can you or somebody else provide one instead of this non-policy-based, unconstructive back-and-forth of "Well, I think something is true, so it is true." Yue🌙 (talk) 17:50, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

In the absence of literally anything, I found this Chinese source regarding North Korea's flag. I don't know how reliable it would be considered, but it basically says what Yue says; that we don't know what the specifications of North Korea's flag designs are due to the absence of official information. The Account 2 (talk) 18:48, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

	This LLM-generated text has been collapsed and should be excluded from assessments of consensus.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Following the threads above ("Flag ratio update" and "Reproducing flags in photographs is original research and bad practice"), I have come across three further sources bearing on the reported revision. None of them is a reliable source on its own, so I am posting them as leads to be weighed rather than as grounds for editing the article. 1. Xiaohongshu (RedNote) post — photograph of a DPRK notice board. A photograph circulating on Xiaohongshu (小紅書; account "@先军长征") shows what appears to be a DPRK wall-mounted display on the flag. Its Korean text states that the revised specification took effect in January 2026 ("2026년 1월"), that the height-to-width ratio is 1:1.65, and that the white stripes are 1.7 times the width of the previous ones ("종전의 1.7배"). Reliability: self-published user content (WP:SPS / WP:UGC); the image's origin cannot be traced beyond the posting account. Not citable in the article itself — useful only as a lead. 2. arca.live — "인공기 개정 시기 및 흰줄 굵기 공식 확인" (posted 14 August 2026 by user Wonsaponatime): https://arca.live/b/dprk/179876993 Reproduces what it describes as material photographed in Rason (라선시) and gives the same figures: revision January 2026; ratio 1:1.65; white stripe thickness 1.7× the previous. It adds that the white circle and the star appear unchanged in size, and that the earlier apparent enlargement of the circle is a consequence of the thicker white stripes. Reliability: anonymous user forum; not reliable under WP:RS. 3. NamuWiki — 인공기: https://namu.wiki/w/인공기 The article is the most detailed of the three. It records in its infobox 제정 시기 as "1948년 7월 10일 (북조선인민위원회); 2026년 1월 (비율 수정); 2026년 3월 23일 (헌법 개정)" with 비율 "1:1.65" (integer 20:33); and it quotes a notice-style sentence: "경애하는 김정은 동지의 세심한 지도에 의하여 2026년 1월 국기의 세로와 가로의 비률이 1:1.65로, 흰줄두께는 종전의 1.7배로 되였다." It explains the date question directly: initially the change was reported as having come with the 23 March constitutional amendment, but "북한 내부의 안내판" (internal DPRK notice boards) showed the change had in fact been made in January 2026. It further states that the white stripe is 1.7× thicker and that the centre of the white circle and red star moved to the 2/5 point along the width (closer to the middle than before), while a footnote says the circle and star did not actually change size and merely appear larger. It adds that the new design began to appear around the 2026 New Year's celebrations and was rolled out widely at polling stations for the 15 March Supreme People's Assembly election, with the old flag still widely in use as of August 2026 (a period of mixed use). Reliability: NamuWiki is a user-generated wiki and not a reliable source (WP:UGC). Notably, it gives no external citation for the January 2026 date — the claim rests on photographs of internal DPRK notice boards. I list it because it is the most detailed statement of the reported specification and because it addresses the January/March question explicitly. On the sourcing chain. These appear to be descriptions of a single underlying object rather than three independent sources: the arca.live post says its material was photographed in Rason, NamuWiki attributes the January date to DPRK internal notice boards, and the panel's wording and NamuWiki's quoted sentence are near-identical. They therefore corroborate each other's wording, but not the authenticity of the board itself. Some caveats: (a) all three are user-generated, and none provides an official DPRK publication; (b) the "1.7 times" figure refers to the width of the white stripes, not to the diameter of the white circle; (c) the reported January 2026 date and the March 2026 constitutional amendment are not mutually exclusive, but none of these sources establishes which is the operative date; (d) they do not address the point raised above that thickened white stripes already appear in DPRK imagery from 2024–2025. I am not proposing any edit at this stage. An official DPRK publication (an updated annex to the national flag law, or the promulgated constitutional text) would settle the question far better than any of the above.--~2026-49820-09 (talk) 18:33, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

As the LLM stated for you, "all three [sources] are user-generated" and thus not reliable. Collapsing LLM-generated comment. Yue🌙 (talk) 19:15, 14 September 2026 (UTC)