Gangwon State is a Special Self-Governing Province of South Korea and the least densely populated subdivision of the country. Gangwon is one of the three provinces in South Korea with special self-governing status, the others being Jeju Province and Jeonbuk State. On the east bound by the East Sea, it borders Gyeonggi Province to its west, North Gyeongsang Province and North Chungcheong Province to its south, and the Military Demarcation Line to the north, separating it from North Korea's Kangwŏn Province. Before the division of Korea in 1945 Gangwon and Kangwŏn Provinces formed a single province.

Korean is the native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea. The language has notable differences in each of the Koreas, in part owing to different official standardizations of the language. They are still largely mutually intelligible, however. South Korean newspaper Daily NK has claimed North Korea criminalizes the use of the South's standard language with the death penalty, and South Korean education and media often portray the North's language as alien and uncomfortable.