The Holy Empire of TaeKook is a colossal, cultured nation, ruled by Emperor Aethan with an iron fist, and renowned for its anti-smoking policies, public floggings, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, cynical, devout population of 4.297 billion TaeKookers are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn't gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

The enormous, corrupt, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Education, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of City of Aelfheim. The average income tax rate is 84.0%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient TaeKookers economy, worth 465 trillion Crests a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is quite specialized, is mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Tourism, Cheese Exports, and Arms Manufacturing. Average income is an impressive 108,327 Crests, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Suburban residents are told not to panic while hitchhikers swarm their neighborhoods, bin lorries have replaced birds as the source of the dawn chorus, when flight control tells pilots to alter course the usual reply is "No, YOU move!", and everyone has the equal opportunity to have their wallet stolen. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. TaeKook's national animal is the Gryphon, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Cult of TaeKookers.

TaeKook is ranked 14,370^th in the world and 4^th in Philippines for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 362.65 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.