The North Korean government credits Kim Il Sung, the country's founder and first leader, as the designer of the flag.

[g][2][3] The design of the flag is defined in Chapter VII, Article 170 of the Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, 1948 (2014 revision).

The ratio of the width to the length is 1:2.The article was retained from the country's provisional constitution, which was drafted in late 1947 and adopted at a special session of the People's Assembly of North Korea in February 1948.

According to an article published on 8 August 2013 in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, Kim Il Sung gave the following significance to the flag's elements after designing it:[6] The red colour of the flag symbolises the anti-Japanese fervour, the red blood shed by the Korean patriots and the invincible might of our people firmly united to support the Republic.

The North Korean flag is flown regularly from the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, government buildings, courtrooms, and diplomatic missions abroad.

The taegukgi is a white field with a centered blue and red taegeuk surrounded by four trigrams, representing sky, water, land, and fire.

[18] The Allies' victory in World War II in 1945 resulted in Japan relinquishing control over Korea and the peninsula being divided into two occupation zones.

According to a Tongil News report of an article by the state-run Rodong Sinmun, Kim Il Sung began expressing the necessity of a new national flag and emblem in January 1948.

Kim Il Sung initially chose a design similar to the flag that was adopted, except its width-to-length ratio was 2:3 and the white disc was in the center and did not feature a charge.

In it, he praises the new flag as a symbol of the country's future and discredits the design of the taegukgi as overly complex, unintelligible, and rooted in superstition.

[29] Pak Il, a Soviet-Korean interpreter for the Soviet 25th Army, gave a different account of the flag's creation in two interviews, one to the Russian magazine Sovershenno Sekretno in 1992 and another to the South Korean newspaper The Dong-A Ilbo in 1993.

In 1947, Soviet major general Nikolai Georgiyevich Lebedev summoned Kim Tu-bong to discuss whether the taegukgi should be retained by a newly-founded North Korea.

Kim Tu-bong was in favour of keeping the taegukgi and attempted to explain to Lebedev the flag's significance within East Asian philosophy.

[6][30] Pak's account of the flag's creation was corroborated by fellow Soviet-Korean Chŏng Sangjin, who held prominent positions in the North Korean culture and propaganda ministry.

For example, propaganda posters often include the national flag, but it is depicted less prominently than symbols of Juche, North Korea's state ideology attributed to Kim Il Sung.

[35][36][37] It is illegal to carry or raise the North Korean flag in South Korea; the country's National Security Act prohibits actions that may be interpreted as pro-communist.

An official from the Pyeongchang Olympic Organizing Committee explained that the decision was made to avoid causing controversy over possibly violating the National Security Act.

[39][43] Anti-North Korea protesters burned the North Korean flag in front of the Olympic stadium hours before the games' opening ceremony.

In 2008, the Asian Football Confederation used the North Korean flag in a post on its website about South Korea's previous hosting of the tournament.

In 2023, the official website of the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change displayed the North Korean flag for South Korea in its list of participants.