Why was Korea divided?
Why was Korea divided?
Blog Article
Unified Korea
In the Middle Ages and modern times, the Korean Peninsula was unified, ruled by generations of dynasties. After being occupied by Japan after the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and officially annexed five years later, Korea remained under Japanese colonial rule for 35 years (until the end of World War II), as Japan was defeated by two allied powers in that era, the Soviet Union, which was supporting the Soviet Union. Armed resistance in North Korea and the United States of America, which crushed Japan in the war. Then began signs of dividing Korea into two countries.
Why was Korea divided?
After World War II, the Yalta Conference was held in February 1945, in which it was agreed between the Allied powers to administer the areas that had been liberated by the Axis forces (Japan and Germany in particular), and this was to ensure the establishment of local governments loyal to the Allies. However, due to tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States (which were the main allies in the war against the Axis), it was agreed that Korea would be divided along the 38th parallel with the Soviet Union administering northern Korea and the United States administering southern Korea.
In August 1945, the Soviet Union, which follows the communist economic system, and the United States of America, which follows the capitalist system, shared control of the Korean Peninsula. Over the next three years (1945-1948), the Soviet army and its agents established a communist regime in northern Korea. In the south, a military government was formed, with direct support from the United States.
Soviet policies were widely popular among the bulk of North Korea's workers and peasants, but most middle-class Koreans fled to South Korea, where the majority of the Korean population resides today. The US-backed regime in the South clearly favored right-wing capitalist anti-communist elements, according to Robinson.
The Cold War was a reality and an event that Koreans were experiencing. Every attempt to find common ground or reunify Korea was thwarted due to the unwillingness of the Soviet Union and the United States to surrender to the other. Unification meant implementing a single economic system, whether capitalist or socialist.
In 1948, the United States called for a UN-sponsored plebiscite for all Koreans to determine the future of all of Korea. But Soviet-backed North Korea refused to participate, so the South formed its own government in Seoul, the capital of present-day South Korea, led by the staunchly anti-communist Syngman Rhee.
North Korea responded in kind, appointing former armed resistance warlord Kim Il Sung as the first Prime Minister of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the capital, Pyongyang.
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