Korea first felt the need for a national flag as it was preparing for the Korean-American Treaty of Commerce, which was concluded on May 22 and signed on June 6, 1882. This was during the 19th year of the reign of King Gojong of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910).

Though China had been pressing Korea to use a dragon design on its national flag, Korea rejected this in favor of a blue and red yin-yang on a white field a favorite Korean design since ancient times. Thus, the taegeuk design flag became the temporary national flag. Later, eight trigrams-combinations of three unbroken and broken bars were added around the taegeuk circle, thereby creating the Taegeukgi, which served as the national flag for a while.

King Gojong appointed Bak, YoungHyo as his ambassador to Japan in September 1882. While aboard ship heading for Japan, Bak drew a national flag with a taegeuk circle but included only four trigrams instead of eight, and started using the flag on the 25th of that month. On October 3, Park reported this change to King Gojong, who formally proclaimed the Taegeukgi as the national flag on March 6, 1883. For some unknown reason, however, he did not have formal instructions published at that time on how to make the flag. In fact, it wasn't until June 29, 1942, that the provisional Korean government in exile enacted a law on the uniform method of making the national flag. The law was promulgated, but since the government was in exile, it was not widely known to Koreans at home still under Japanese colonial rule.

Following the founding of the Republic of Korea on August 15, 1948, the government felt that it should codify the method of making the national flag. This prompted the government to form a special commission in January 1949 that issued the provision on the national flag on October 15 of that year. Since then, the Republic of Korea has been using the Taegeukgi as the national flag.

The Taegeukgi embodies the ideals of Koreans who have pursued development and prosperity under universal principles and truth.