Korean conflict

The Korean conflict is an ongoing conflict based on the division of Korea between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and South Korea (Republic of Korea), both of which claim to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea. During the Cold War, North Korea was backed by the Soviet Union, China, and other allies, while South Korea was backed by the United States and its Western allies.

The division of Korea by the United States and the Soviet Union occurred in 1945. Both superpowers created a government in their own image. Tensions erupted into the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953. When the war ended, both countries were devastated but the division remained. North and South Korea continued a military standoff, with periodic clashes. The conflict survived the end of the Cold War and continues to this day.

The US maintains a military presence in the South to assist South Korea in accordance with the ROK–US Mutual Defense Treaty. In 1997, US President Bill Clinton described the division of Korea as the "Cold War's last divide". In 2002, US President George W. Bush described North Korea as a member of an "axis of evil". Facing increasing isolation, North Korea developed missile and nuclear capabilities.

Following heightened tension throughout 2017, 2018 saw North and South Korea, and the US, holding a series of summits which promised peace and nuclear disarmament. This led to the Panmunjom Declaration on 27 April 2018, when the North and the South agreed to work together to denuclearize the peninsula, improve inter-Korean relations, end the conflict and move towards the peaceful reunification.

Background

Korea was annexed by the Empire of Japan on 22 August 1910 and ruled by it until 2 September 1945. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, nationalist and radical groups emerged, mostly in exile, to struggle for independence. Divergent in their outlooks and approaches, these groups failed to unite into a single national movement. Based in China, the Korean Provisional Government failed to obtain widespread recognition. The many leaders advocating for Korean independence included the conservative and US-educated Syngman Rhee, who lobbied the US government, and the Communist Kim Il-sung, who fought a guerrilla war against the Japanese from neighboring Manchuria to the north of Korea.

Following the end of the occupation, many high-ranking Koreans were accused of collaborating with Japanese imperialism. An intense and bloody struggle between various figures and political groups aspiring to lead Korea ensued.

Division of Korea

On 9 August 1945, as agreed by the Allies at the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and advanced into Korea. The US government requested that the Soviet advance stop at the 38th parallel. The US forces were to occupy the area south of the 38th parallel, including the capital, Seoul. This division of Korea into two zones of occupation was incorporated into General Order No. 1 which was given to Japanese forces after the surrender of Japan on 15 August. On 24 August, the Red Army entered Pyongyang and established a military government over Korea north of the parallel. American forces landed in the south on 8 September and established the US Army Military Government in Korea.

The Allies had originally envisaged a joint trusteeship which would steer Korea towards independence, but most Korean nationalists wanted independence immediately. Meanwhile, the wartime co-operation between the Soviet Union and the US deteriorated as the Cold War took hold. Both occupying powers began promoting into positions of authority Koreans aligned with their side of politics and marginalizing their opponents. Many of these emerging political leaders were returning exiles with little popular support. In North Korea, the Soviet Union supported Korean communists. Kim Il-sung, who from 1941 had served in the Soviet Army, became the major political figure. Society was centralized and collectivized, following the Soviet model. Politics in the South were more tumultuous, but the strongly anti-communist Syngman Rhee, who had been educated in the US, was positioned as the most prominent politician.

In South Korea, a general election was held on 10 May 1948. The Republic of Korea (or ROK) was established with Syngman Rhee as president, and formally replaced the US military occupation on 15 August. In North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (or DPRK) was declared on 9 September, with Kim Il-sung, as prime minister. Soviet occupation forces left the DPRK on 10 December 1948. US forces left the ROK the following year, though the US Korean Military Advisory Group remained to train the Republic of Korea Army. The new regimes even adopted different names for Korea: the North choosing ''Choson'', and the South ''Hanguk''.

Both opposing governments considered themselves to be the government of the whole of Korean Peninsula (as they do to this day), and both saw the division as temporary. Kim Il-sung lobbied Stalin and Mao for support in a war of reunification, while Syngman Rhee repeatedly expressed his desire to conquer the North. In 1948, North Korea, which had almost all of the generators, turned off the electricity supply to the South. In the lead-up to the outbreak of civil war, there were frequent clashes along the 38th parallel, especially at Kaesong and Ongjin, initiated by both sides.

Throughout this period there were uprisings in the South, such as the Jeju Uprising and the Yeosu–Suncheon Rebellion, that were brutally suppressed. In all, over one hundred thousand people died in fighting across Korea before the Korean War began.

Korean War (1950–1953)

By 1950, North Korea had clear military superiority over the South. The Soviet occupiers had armed it with surplus weaponry and provided training. Many troops returning to North Korea were battle-hardened from their participation in the Chinese Civil War, which had just ended. Kim Il-sung expected a quick victory, predicting that there would be pro-communist uprisings in the South and that the US would not intervene. Rather than perceiving the conflict as a civil war, however, the West saw it in Cold War terms as communist aggression, related to recent events in China and Eastern Europe.

North Korea invaded the South on 25 June 1950, and swiftly overran most of the country. In September 1950 United Nations force, led by the US, intervened to defend the South, and following the Incheon Landing and breakout from the Pusan Perimeter, rapidly advanced into North Korea. As the UN force neared the border with China, Chinese forces intervened on behalf of North Korea, shifting the balance of the war again. Fighting ended on 27 July 1953, with an armistice that approximately restored the original boundaries between North and South Korea.

Korea was devastated. Around three million civilians and soldiers had been killed. Seoul was in ruins, having changed hands four times. Several million North Korean refugees fled to the South. Almost every substantial building in North Korea had been destroyed. As a result, North Koreans developed a deep-seated antagonism towards the US.

Armistice

Negotiations for an armistice began on 10 July 1951, as the war continued. The main issues were the establishment of a new demarcation line and the exchange of prisoners. After Stalin died, the Soviet Union brokered concessions which led to an agreement on 27 July 1953.

President Syngman Rhee opposed the armistice because it left Korea divided. As negotiations drew to a close, he attempted to sabotage the arrangements for the release of prisoners, and led mass rallies against the armistice. He refused to sign the agreement, but reluctantly agreed to abide by it.

The armistice inaugurated an official ceasefire but did not lead to a peace treaty for two Koreas. It established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a buffer zone between the two sides, that intersected the 38th parallel but did not follow it. Despite its name, the border was, and continues to be, one of the most militarized in the world.

North Korea announced that it would no longer abide by the armistice at least six times, in the years 1994, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2013.

Later Cold War period

After the war, the Chinese forces left, but US forces remained in the South. Sporadic conflict continued. The North's occupation of the South left behind a guerrilla movement that persisted in the Cholla provinces. On 1 October 1953, the United States and South Korea signed a defense treaty. In 1958, the United States stationed nuclear weapons in South Korea. In 1961, North Korea signed mutual defense treaties with the USSR and China. In the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty China pledged to immediately render military and other assistance by all means to North Korea against any outside attack. During this period, North Korea was described by former CIA director Robert Gates to be the "toughest intelligence target in the world". Alongside the military confrontation, there was a propaganda war, including balloon propaganda campaigns.

The opposing regimes aligned themselves with opposing sides in the Cold War. Both sides received recognition as the legitimate government of Korea from the opposing blocs. South Korea became a strongly anti-Communist military dictatorship. North Korea presented itself as a champion of orthodox Communism, distinct from the Soviet Union and China. The regime developed the doctrine of Juche or self-reliance, which included extreme military mobilization. In response to the threat of nuclear war, it constructed extensive facilities underground and in the mountains. The Pyongyang Metro opened in the 1970s, with the capacity to double as bomb shelter. Until the early 1970s, North Korea was economically the equal of the South.

South Korea was heavily involved in the Vietnam War. Hundreds of North Korean fighter pilots went to Vietnam, shooting down 26 US aircraft. Teams of North Korean psychological warfare specialists targeted South Korean troops, and Vietnamese guerrillas were trained in the North.

Tensions between North and South escalated in the late 1960s with a series of low-level armed clashes known as the Korean DMZ Conflict. In 1966, Kim declared "liberation of the south" to be a "national duty". In 1968, North Korean commandos launched the Blue House raid, an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the South Korean President Park Chung-hee. Shortly after, the American spy ship USS ''Pueblo'' was captured by the North Korean navy. The Americans saw the crisis in terms of the global confrontation with Communism, but, rather than orchestrating the incident, the Soviet government was concerned by it. The crisis was initiated by Kim, inspired by Communist successes in the Vietnam War.

In 1967, Korean-born composer Isang Yun was kidnapped in West Germany by South Korean agents and imprisoned in South Korea on the charge of spying for the North. He was released after an international outcry.

In 1969, North Korea shot down a US EC-121 spy plane over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 crew on board, which constituted the largest single loss of US aircrew during the Cold War. In 1969, Korean Air Lines YS-11 was hijacked and flown to North Korea. Similarly, in 1970, the hijackers of Japan Airlines Flight 351 were given asylum in North Korea. In response to the Blue House raid, the South Korean government set up a special unit to assassinate Kim Il-sung, but the mission was aborted in 1972.

In 1974 a North Korean sympathizer attempted to assassinate President Park and killed his wife, Yuk Young-soo. In 1976, the Panmunjeom Axe incident led to the death of two US Army officers in the DMZ and threatened to trigger a wider war. In the 1970s, North Korea kidnapped a number of Japanese citizens.

In 1976, in now-declassified minutes, US Deputy Secretary of Defense William Clements told Henry Kissinger that there had been 200 raids or incursions into North Korea from the South, though not by the US military. According to South Korean politicians who have campaigned for compensation for the survivors, more than 7,700 secret agents infiltrated North Korea from 1953 to 1972, of which about 5,300 are believed not to have returned. Details of only a few of these incursions have become public, including raids by South Korean forces in 1967 that had sabotaged about 50 North Korean facilities. Other missions included targeting advisers from China and the Soviet Union in order to undermine relations between North Korea and its allies.

The East German leader, Erich Honecker, who visited in 1977, was one of Kim Il-sung's closest foreign friends. In 1986, East Germany and North Korea signed an agreement on military co-operation. Kim was also close to maverick Communist leaders, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, and Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania.
Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi met with Kim Il Sung and was a close ally of the DPRK. North Korea began to play a part in the global radical movement, forging ties with such diverse groups as the Black Panther Party of the US, the Workers Party of Ireland, and the African National Congress. As it increasingly emphasized its independence, North Korea began to promote the doctrine of ''Juche'' ("self-reliance") as an alternative to orthodox Marxism-Leninism and as a model for developing countries to follow.

When North-South dialogue started in 1972, North Korea began to receive diplomatic recognition from countries outside the Communist bloc. Within four years, North Korea was recognized by 93 countries, on par with South Korea's recognition by 96 countries. North Korea gained entry into the World Health Organization and, as a result, sent its first permanent observer missions to the United Nations (UN). In 1975, it joined the Non-Aligned Movement.

During the 1970s, both North and South began building up their military capacity. It was discovered that North Korea had dug tunnels under the DMZ which could accommodate thousands of troops. Alarmed at the prospect of US disengagement, South Korea began a secret nuclear weapons program which was strongly opposed by Washington.

In 1977, US President Jimmy Carter proposed the withdrawal of troops from South Korea. There was a widespread backlash in America and in South Korea, and critics argued that this would allow the North to capture Seoul. Carter postponed the move, and his successor Ronald Reagan reversed the policy, increasing troop numbers to forty-three thousand. After Reagan supplied the South with F-16 fighters, and after Kim Il-sung visited Moscow in 1984, the USSR recommenced military aid and co-operation with the North.

Unrest in South Korea came to a head with the Gwangju Uprising in 1980. The dictatorship equated dissent with North Korean subversion. On the other hand, some young protesters viewed the US as complicit in political repression and identified with the North's nationalist propaganda.

In 1983 North Korea carried out the Rangoon bombing, a failed assassination attempt against South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan while he was visiting Burma. The bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987, in the lead up to the Seoul Olympics, led to the US government placing North Korea on its list of terrorist countries. North Korea launched a boycott of the Games, supported by Cuba, Ethiopia, Albania and the Seychelles.

In 1986, former South Korean foreign minister Choe Deok-sin defected to North Korea, becoming a leader of the Chondoist Chongu Party.

In the 1980s, the South Korean government built a tall flagpole in the village of Daeseong-dong in the DMZ. In response, North Korea built a tall flagpole in the nearby village of Kijŏng-dong

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