The Korean Peninsula: a Fifty-Year Struggle for Peace and Reconciliation
The Conflict
The Korean Peninsula has been divided for fifty years by political conflict, with the tensions occasionally resulting in military action. In 2000, North Korea and South Korea met for a legendary summit. The meeting of the leaders was followed by limited and temporary reunification of families separated by fifty years of war and political animosity.
Political
- At the end of World War II, the victorious Allies (the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and England), decided to temporarily divide and occupy Korea, formerly occupied by Japan. The United States occupied the south and the Soviet Union the north. As Cold War animosities between the West and the Soviet Union solidified, both South Korea and North Korea established their own governments, claiming the right to the entire Korean Peninsula.
- Cold War divisions between communist North Korea (supported by the Soviet Union and China) and Western-supported South Korea led to military actions, espionage, and the separation of families.
- North Korea, for several years in the midst of economic collapse and famine, needs to find a way to open itself to international trade and aid.
In 2000, the announcement and subsequent inter-Korean summit between the South Korean president Kim Dae Jung and the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang was historic: This was the first face-to-face meeting between leaders of the North and South, almost fifty years after the onset of the Korean War.
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