North Yemen (Arabic: اليمن الشمالي, romanized: al-Yaman al-šamāliyya) is a term used to describe the Kingdom of Yemen (1918–1962), the Yemen Arab Republic (1962–1990), and the regimes that preceded them and exercised sovereignty over that region of Yemen. Its capital was Sanaa from 1918 to 1948 and again from 1962 to 1990. Located in the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula, the area of the region (Upper Yemen) is 195,000 square kilometers, it used to have a population of about thirteen million people prior to the Yemeni unification. It was bordered to the north by Saudi Arabia, to the south and east by South Yemen, to the west by the Red Sea, and to Bab al-Mandab in the southwest.
North Yemen was admitted to the United Nations on September 30, 1947. In 1962, the country fought a bloody civil war that ended with the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a republic in 1970. It was one of the predecessor states of the Republic of Yemen, alongside South Yemen, until its eventual unification in 1990.