South-North Division in Korea

South-North Division in Korea Korea is an East Asian country, which is surrounded by the sea on three sides, but unfortunately divided into two parts-South Korea and North Korea. Korea is bordered by China on the north and by the navigable Yalu and Tumen Rivers, both of which flow from Paektusan, the highest point in Korea at 9,000 feet (Weightman 360). Korea has four seasons and a monsoon climate with warm, humid summers and cold, dry winters. Continuous rains from June to July are a phenomenon. South and North Korea has many differences by geological patterns.

North Korea is influenced by continental extremes, the south is warmed by the Japan Current. Moreover, South Korea’s terrain is mostly mountainous. Lowlands is located in the west and southeast, so agriculture is intensive with rice, vegetables, fruit, and other types of market gardening. However, North Korea has only about a sixth of mountains for cropping and few coastal lowlands for rice, corn, wheat, and soybeans. Therefore, they have a food sufficient problem. In Korea, the most important event in history is Korean War. The Korean War between South and North Korea broke out on June 25, 1950, in which at least 2. million persons lost their lives. The North Korean Army invaded across the 38th parallel in the morning. The Korean citizens did not realize that the war broke out because by that time, there were a lot of skirmishes between the South and North Army. Before the Korean War erupted, Korea was split into political, ideologically entities due to the influence of the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This research paper shows how the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics affected the Korean War and why the Korean War erupted.

Moreover, it will be how South Korea has developed an economy and what is likely to happen in the future. The origins of the Korean War are not as simple as people might think. It is strongly connected by not only causes and effects but also nations’ understandings. The Yalta Conference of 1945 was the second of three conference held between the three Allied superpowers during the Second World War era (Perekop). The Yalta Conference was about how to reform the world after winning the Second World War. One of the issues in this conference was about the Korean Peninsula’s trusteeship.

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Many countries were involved in Korea. Especially, when Soviet planned the war against Japan. The U. S also dropped an a-bomb on Hiroshima where the headquarters of the Japanese Army was in. Later, the Soviet declared the war against Japan and the army was planning to invade Japan through the Korean Peninsula, so they encamped at the northern part of Korea. Finally, Japan surrendered on August 15th. The U. S Army was placed in the southern part of Korea to discuss the trusteeship. So the northern part of Korea was occupied by the Soviets and the southern part of Korea was occupied by the U. S.

At a conference in Moscow in December, the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Britain, and the U. S. Secretary of State met and discussed a five-year trusteeship for Korea (The Korean War). During those years, North Korea had absorbed the Communist ideology. Kim Il-Sung wanted to unite Korea, so he chose to invade South Korea. It wouldn’t take long for the conflict to come to a head between North and South Korea. Indeed, the Korean War erupted in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. The war had been broken out in Ong-Jin Peninsula and started to spread out as time passed. The U. S almost immediately entered the battle.

Truman told his daughter, Margaret, that “We are going to fight. ” (The Korean War) The countryside quickly transformed into a practical wasteland. During the Korean War, Northern troops conquered Seoul, which is the capital city, for three days. South Korea’s defense line receded to the Nakdong River. The U. N decided to cooperate with South Korea and the war started to have the effect of becoming a world war. Douglas MacArthur, the commanding general of the United Nations forces in Korea, launched his ambitious attack and landed at Inch’on on September 15, and the course of the war changed abruptly.

Many parts in North Korea were taken by South Korea. After that, two high-ranking representatives from North Korea asked China to send troops into Korea. Then, China intervened in the Korean War to help North Korea, so the Soviet Union and China supported North Korea with arms, tanks, military supplies, fuel, foodstuffs, and medicine. In the case of South Korea, according to South Korea- a Country Study, with fifteen member-nations of the United Nations, had contributed armed forces and medical units to South Korea. On July 27th 1953, after the true treaty, North and South Korea are in a truce on paper along the hostile parallel line.

As a result of the war, lots of massacres were made and the left-right wing’s conflict has become worse. In South Korea, the Korean-American Mutual Defensive Treaty was made. The enmity between South and North Korea got worse, as well as the inequality in social status. Then the U. S started to compete with the Soviets, which became known as the Cold War and focus was on preventing communization. After the Korean War, the Korean economy was very poor, and nobody thought that Korea could develop the economy as now. However, the Korean government made some plans to develop the economy.

They started five-Year plans. Park Chung Hee utilized a unique method of series of five economic plans to rapidly develop an economy. The first Five-Year Economic Development Plan began in 1962. This plan consisted of initial steps toward the building of a self-sufficient industrial structure that was neither consumption oriented nor over-dependent on oil (South Korea-Economic Plans). The second Five-Year Economic Development Plan (1967- 71) started with rapidly building import-substitution industries, including steel, machinery, and chemical industries.

The third Five-Year Economic Development Plan (1972-76) developed the chemical industry and the economy stable. Before starting the fourth Five Economic Development Plan, The Korean President said, “The fourth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (1977-81) will foster the development of industries designed to compete effectively in the world's industrial export markets” (Cho-Sun 20). These major strategic industries consisted of technology-intensive and skilled labor-intensive industries such as machinery, electronics, and shipbuilding (South Korea-Economic Plans).

The fifth Five-Year Economic and Social Development Plan (1982-86) concentrate on devote to building high-technology products on the world market. The sixth Five-Year Economic and Social Development Plan (1987-91) to a large extent continued to emphasize the goals of the previous plan. The goal of the seventh Five-Year Economic and Social Development Plan (1992-96), formulated in 1989, was to develop high-technology fields, such as microelectronics, new materials, fine chemicals, bioengineering, optics, and aerospace.

Government and industry would work together to build high-technology facilities in seven provincial cities to better balance the geographic distribution of industry throughout South Korea (South Korea-Economic Plans). These Five Year plans had increased wealth and strengthen political stability. Moreover, these plans lead South Korea to become Asia’s fourth largest economy and the world’s 12th largest economy. Also, South Korea is a member of the United Nations, WTO, and OECD. I found that geographic patterns by researching Five Year Economic plans.

The effect of Five year Economic plans is to preserve geographical inequities. Korea has been developed rapidly. Especially there are many rapid developments from metropolitan areas which are centered in Seoul to Kyoung-nam. Because of this development, inconsistent development has been occurred and financial development was inevitably centered in port towns. This phenomenon led young people in the rural areas move to metropolitan areas. Now a days, the rural areas contains a disproportionate number of young middle-class families.

Therefore, income inequality by geographical areas is getting worse. According to Korea University economics professor Kim Seong-hui, “This is the result of both the wage differences between large and small-medium businesses, and between regular and irregular workers. ” So, a lot of young people in the rural areas want to move to metropolitan areas, where the majority of big companies located in, to be rich. Although the worst chapters of the Korean war now over, the bitterness between North and South Korea has continued to rage until this day.

This is true despite the issue of cease-fire resolutions by the UN and even despite continued negotiations to reunite the countries. The United States has been closely involved with South Korea. However, North Korea has become a progressively greater world problem. Fortunately, North Korea’s most recent disregard for world concern did not turn out to be as disastrous as it could have been. However, Such disregard for world concerns has been characteristic of North Korea since the Korean War.

North Korea has planed the nuclear program and spent a lot of money for the military equipment. Unfortunately, it might be predicted that this recent action was just North Korea’s means of testing the U. S president and his administration to see just what they would do in such a situation. There will undoubtedly be many more tests to come. Even though, South Korea wants to reunify in stages and has tried to talk, these actions of North Korea will threat reunification considerations. Bibliography Cumings, Bruce. The Korean War- A History. ” A Modern Library Chronicles Book. 2010. Hickey, Michael. “The Korean War: The West Confronts Communism, 1950-1953”. The Overlook Press. 1999. Kim, Y. M. “The Fourth Economic Development Plan. ” Cho-Sun. 20 Aug. 1977: 10-11. Shaw, William. “South Korea: A Country Study. ” Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. Web. 1990. “South Korea-Economic Plans”. Mongabay. Web. June. 1990. Weightman, Barbara A. “Dragons and Tigers : A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia. ” Wiley. 2010.

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