As North Korea vows to restart its mothballed nuclear facilities, how did the Korean peninsular become so divided?

19:24, UK, Thursday 04 April 2013

Korea map

Tim Marshall

Diplomatic Editor

Tim Marshall

For hundreds of years Korea has been a battleground for competing nations and ideas, but the last century - possibly the darkest in the peninsula's history - has seen it divided as never before.

It began with Russia and Japan fighting for control of the country in 1904.

Japan used its victory to annex Korea in 1910, having already installed a puppet leader. Emperor Sunjong was the last 'united' Korean leader and the last emperor in a dynasty stretching back 500 years.

By the time he died in 1926 the Japanese were completely in control and attempting to undermine Korea's unique cultural identity. The Korean language and customs were suppressed and at one point Tokyo even tried to enforce a law stating that all second names should be Japanese.

That, and other inequities, left an anti-Japanese feeling among Koreans which lasts to this day.


The Americans controlled south of the line - the Russians installed a communist regime in the north, later ceding influence to China.

In 1950 the North launched a surprise attack across the 38th parallel and quickly took most of the South. The United Nations then backed what it called a "police action" to repulse the advance and the Korean War, which would last for three years, had begun.

Most troops on the UN side were American, but 90,000 British soldiers were involved in fighting the Chinese Red Army and more than 1,000 were killed, many of them conscripts.

By the time an armistice was signed in July 1953, 2.5 million people had died. The line of division remained where it had started - at the 38th parallel.

After the war South Korea's economy prospered under a series of capitalist dictatorships and the country eventually became a democracy. North Korea remains an economic basket case and a police state which has been ruled by the same family for three generations. First came Kim Il-Sung, then his son Kim Jong-Il, and now the grandson Kim Jong-Un.

The legacy of that dark century has left South Korea's security guaranteed by an American defence treaty, and North Korea tied to a military pact with China in the event of it being attacked.


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