North Korea and South Korea

Subject: IR

Context:

North Korea has severed its contact with South Korea and branded South Korea as Enemy. It is response to failure of South Korea to stop activists from floating anti-Pyongyang leaflets across their tense border.

Concept:

• North and South Korea have been divided for more than 70 years, ever since the Korean Peninsula became an unexpected casualty of the escalating Cold Warbetween two rival superpowers: the Soviet Union and the United States.
• In August 1945, the two allies divided control over the Korean Peninsula. Over the next three years (1945-48), the Soviet Army and its proxies set up a communist regime in the area north of latitude 38˚ N, or the 38th parallel. South of that line, a military government was formed, supported directly by the United States.
• In 1948, the United States called for a United Nation-sponsored vote for all Koreans to determine the future of the peninsula. After the North refused to participate, the South formed its own government in Seoul, led by the strongly anti-communist Syngman Rhee.
• The North responded in kind, installing the former communist guerrilla Kim Il Sung as the first premier of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the capital of Pyongyang.
• The Korean War (1950-53) did little to resolve the question of which regime represented the “true” Korea.
• The armistice that ended that conflict in 1953 left the peninsula divided much as before, with a demilitarized zone (DMZ) running roughly along the 38th parallel.