East Asia Map Quiz: Find the Countries of East Asia

How to play the East Asia map quiz

The map covers East Asia from China's western deserts to Japan, and from Mongolia south to Taiwan and the island of Hainan. Russia, Kazakhstan, India and the countries of Southeast Asia are gray.

• Click the map. The quiz names a country ("Click Mongolia") and you click it.
• Type the name. One country lights up; type its name. "Korea" counts for South Korea, and "DPRK" for North Korea.
• Multiple choice. Pick the highlighted country from four names.
• Drag labels. Drag all six names onto the map, or tap a name and then a country.

With six countries, a round is short, so try each quiz type in turn. Practice is untimed, the Quiz is timed, and Challenge loops through the countries for 60 seconds while your streak multiplies your points.

The six countries of East Asia

China is so large that it shares land borders with 14 countries, tied with Russia for the most in the world. Hong Kong and Macau, on China's southern coast, are special administrative regions with their own laws and currencies; the map draws them as part of China.

The Korean Peninsula

Korea was one country for more than a thousand years. After World War II it was divided, and the Korean War (1950–1953) ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The border between North and South Korea runs roughly along the 38th parallel, with a 4 km (2.5 mi) wide Demilitarized Zone between them. On the map, North Korea is the northern half of the peninsula and borders China and, for a few miles along the Tumen River, Russia. South Korea's only land border is with North Korea.

Japan's islands

Japan has four main islands, from north to south: Hokkaido, Honshu (the largest, home of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka), Shikoku and Kyushu, plus the long chain of the Ryukyu Islands, including Okinawa, stretching toward Taiwan. Japan sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where four tectonic plates meet, so it has more than 100 active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. Mount Fuji, its highest mountain, is a volcano at 3,776 m (12,388 ft).

Physical features of East Asia

• The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau form China's southwestern edge. Mount Everest is on the border of China and Nepal.
• The Gobi Desert stretches across southern Mongolia and northern China. It is a cold desert, freezing in winter.
• The Yangtze, Asia's longest river at about 6,300 km, flows east across central China to the sea at Shanghai.
• The Yellow River (Huang He) in northern China is often called the cradle of Chinese civilization.
• The Great Wall of China runs for thousands of kilometers across northern China, built and rebuilt over many dynasties.
• Seas: the Yellow Sea between China and Korea, the Sea of Japan (East Sea) between Korea and Japan, and the East and South China Seas to the south.

How school maps show Taiwan

Taiwan has governed itself since 1949, when the Republic of China government moved there at the end of the Chinese Civil War. The People's Republic of China, governed from Beijing, considers Taiwan part of China. The United States, like most countries, formally recognizes the government in Beijing but keeps strong unofficial ties with Taiwan. National Geographic and most classroom atlases draw Taiwan with its own color and label, and this quiz does the same. If your child's textbook shows Taiwan as part of China, it is following a different convention; the fact card notes both.

Languages and writing in East Asia

East Asia's countries share a long history, and you can see it in their writing. Chinese characters have been used for more than 3,000 years, and Japan and Korea borrowed them centuries ago. Japanese today mixes Chinese characters (kanji) with two of its own syllable alphabets, hiragana and katakana. Korean is written in Hangul, an alphabet created in the 1440s under King Sejong so that ordinary people could learn to read quickly; both North and South Korea use it. Mongolian is mostly written in the Cyrillic alphabet, the same one used for Russian, while the traditional Mongolian script runs from top to bottom. Taiwan uses traditional Chinese characters, and mainland China uses a simplified set introduced in the 1950s.

The main languages are different from one another even where the writing looks alike: Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Mongolian are not dialects of one language. That is a useful thing for children to know when they meet the region in a history book or a museum.

Tips to memorize East Asia

1. Start with China. It's the giant in the middle. Everything else is around its edges.
2. Put Mongolia on top. The landlocked country between China and Russia.
3. Add the peninsula. North Korea attaches to China; South Korea hangs below it. Remember "north is on top."
4. Finish with the islands. Japan curves to the east of Korea; Taiwan sits off China's southeast coast.
5. Learn the capitals by story. Seoul and Pyongyang are both near the middle of the peninsula. Beijing means "northern capital" and Tokyo means "eastern capital," and the two names really are on the north and east of the map.
6. Zoom out. When you know all six, move on to the Southeast Asia map quiz and the full Asia map quiz.

Keep learning

The Asian flags quiz is a fun next step: Japan's red circle and South Korea's taegeuk symbol are some of the most recognizable flags in the world. History programs that cover ancient China and Japan, like the ones below, are popular with homeschool families, and many may be covered by scholarship programs on Edulist.