First exposure to this part of Korean history came about two years ago, in 2013, when I wrote about the Korean War for one of my classes: ‘Russia and the USSR’ (which was also, one of my motivations to visit this wonderful country in the first place).
en-korea-partition
Before explaining what I find most fascinating about its history, I would like to explain one of the utmost important things that altered the course of history for the Peninsula and East Asia as a whole, and still has an international effect up until this day: the division of Korea.
As one can tell when visiting South Korea (officially ROK), it is extremely modern and capitalist, while at the same time, they will never be granted permission to visit North Korea (officially the DPRK) as it is ruled under a ‘communist’ (so to speak) regime. This comes from the very first days, before the Korean War, when the peninsula was divided into North and South by the Soviet Union and the United States respectively. Although this was supposed to be ‘a temporary division’, I guess that no political promise can ever have a happy ending like a fairy tale.
Both sides were supposed to hold national elections in 1948 at the same time, but they did not; thus, dividing the peninsula permanently – unless both sides could agree to merge again under one governing authority, which everyone knows that this can only occur in a fairy tale utopia.
Korea therefore was another victim of the Cold War vacuum, as the Soviets and the Americans were fighting about who will practice world supremacy first. Both superpowers removed their forces from the peninsula after their ‘independent’ elections each side held in 1948 and left the two Koreas to their own fate.
So what happened next?
Well, both sides wanted control of the entire peninsula and they believed
that the only way to do that was with the strategy of ‘reunification by force’. So, they would provoke each other constantly in order to start fighting ‘defensively’. Accordingly, one thing that bias South Korean documentaries or books will not admit to, is that South Korea also provoked North Korea at that time to begin a war – and it succeeded.
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