At the beginning of the twentieth century, the peninsula of Korea was part of the Japanese empire. When World War II ended, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union were faced with how to deal with the various possessions of the former Japanese empire (Chang)
In 1987, Chun stepped down and his close friend, Roh Tae Woo, assumed leadership and was subsequently elected president in South Korea's third attempt at establishing a stable civilian government. Four years later, Kim Young Sam, succeeded Roh Tae Woo and, by doing so, became South Korea's first non-military leader since the military coup in 1961 (Cotton)
Although the sunshine policy may be looked upon by many as a failure there are some positive developments that grew out of the philosophy of cooperation initiated by said policy. One of these positive developments was the building of an industrial park, Kaesong, that was built in 2004 just over the 38th parallel in North Korea (Kim)
Unfortunately, the South Korean government was not equipped to handle the influx of refugees and the result was the emergence of slum areas in South Korean cities. In North Korea, following the War, Kim Sung worked to secure this position as dictator (Lankov)
The best chance of a reunion between North and South Korea occurred during the presidency of former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung. Kim Dae-jung, in an effort to bring the two nations closer together, introduced his "sunshine policy (Lee)
Kumgang to all Koreans, North and South. Chung Ju Yung approached the leaders of North Korea twice with the prospect of negotiating the necessary arrangements (Lim)
Adding further to the dispute, the North Korean Government, under the new direction of Kim Jong-un, declared that they would never again deal with the government of South Korea as a result of the military drills. In the days that followed this incident the South Koreans were questioning not only whether to continue providing private aid to the North Koreans but also whether there was a need to increase their military presence in the area (Manyin)
Unceremoniously, the decision as to how to handle the Korean peninsula fell into the lap of two low level US. State Department officials (McCune)
State Department clerks has resulted in a bitter and enduring national division. There have been some positive signs that the division between the two nations is lessening (Soon-young)
¶ … Korean War is one of those rare events in human history: it had no official ending and had no official ending. Although there is a marked date for the beginning of War, June 25, 1950, when the 75,000 North Korean soldiers invaded South Korea across the 38th parallel, War was never officially declared and in July of 1953 an armistice was signed between North Korea and the United Nations forces but an official treaty ending the War was never signed and, although the Cold War has ended on the world stage it continues between the nations of North and South Korea (Stueck)
Despite extensive assistance from the United States and the United Nations, the South Korean economy failed to rebound and it took nearly a decade before the South Korean economy began to demonstrate any significant improvement. Oddly the South Korean improvement coincided with the rise to power of Park Chung Hee (Vu)
forces would press on China along the Yalu river, China's northeastern defense force would be pinned down, Southern Manchuria's power supply (generated from hydroelectric plants in North Korea) would be controlled by hostile forces, and the situation would have resulted in the uprising of domestic and international "reactionary elements." (Dongxiao Yue,) In contrast to this theory there are other academics who question a too simplistic analysis of Chinese motives in entering the Korean War
"North Korea's invasion followed a series of Communist advances around the world, including the 1949 revolution in China." (Kalajian, Douglas) Efforts were made to normalize the growing tension in the region and in 1948 an attempt was made to hold elections throughout the country
was often and perhaps unavoidably compared with and subsumed by the myth and memory of the Second World War. " (Pierpaoli, Paul G
was the world's first socialist republic, which was committed to the spread of the communist revolution among the 'down-trodden' masses of the world. Both of them were looking for areas of influence in Europe as well as Asia and manuevered to promote their own political ideologies (Bell, 55)
In addition, China lost as many as 1 million soldiers, and the United States suffered more than 140,000 casualties with 36,934 dead and 103,284 wounded. Other UN nations suffered 3322 dead and 11,949 wounded (Cumings)
And its allies on one side, and the Soviet Union and China on the other. The stage was, therefore, set for a serious escalation of hostilities between the North and South Koreas (Edwards, 41-43)
One of the popular theses attempting to explain the reasons behind the conflict is that the Korean War was part of a continuing internal civil conflict in Korea which started at the end of World War II. During most of the twentieth century when Korea was ruled by Japan as a rice-producing colony, the Japanese had tried to extinguish all vestiges of Korean national identity (Kaufman, 4)
After the Soviet testing of the atomic bomb in 1949, and the success of the communist revolution in China in the same year, Stalin gained more confidence. Hence, when Kim Il Sung approached him in the spring of 1950 to seek his [Stalin's] approval for military action across the 39th parallel with the assurance that it would be a quick, decisive war, Stalin gave him his go-ahead (Weathersby, 95)
government documents, Bruce Cumings argued that it was a civil war, and that the socialist state established in North Korea had considerable popular support at the time. Industry had been nationalized, land redistributed, and public education expanded to the workers and peasants, while the regime placed women and lower class men into positions of leadership (Cumings 427)