Korea

Abstract

S OUTH KOREA is truly the land of the peace. Some 30 years ago, at the end of World War II, it was partitioned at the 38th Parallel as an interim military measure to facilitate the disarming of defeated Japanese armed forces. North of the Parallel the Russians were in charge. In the South it was the Americans. This administrative arrangement was quickly frozen by the Cold War into a de facto political boundary, separating two sovereign states: the one to the North, Communist; and in the South, a reasonably democratic government formed after free elections monitored by the United Nations. This division lasted almost five years, to June 1950. Then it underwent the violent, bloody adjustment of the Korean War. After 37 months of bitter fighting and 2.4 million casualties (including 54,000 US dead), the boundary between the two states was transformed from a neatly drawn east-west line on the map into an irregular, fortified cease-fire line which, however, still divided the country roughly at the 38th Parallel. Although the fighting stopped, a condition of armed hostilities remained. To this day, an peace is maintained under the terms of the cease-fire clauses of the 1953 Panmunjom Armistice Agreement. Few remember that this document was never signed by South Korea, but by North Korea and Communist China on the one side, and by a US general, representing the United Nations, on the other.