1302_030 The Cold War_Korea

							       KOREA

Hot Battle in the Cold War,
          1950 -
The Korean Peninsula
       Located in a strategic position
         between China, Japan, and
         Russia
       Has suffered nearly 900 invasions
         in its 2,000 years of recorded
         history
          five major periods of foreign
           occupation
             China
             Mongols
             Japan
                  brutal occupation by Japan for 40
                   years prior to Japan's defeat in 1945
                   at the end of the Second World War
             United States and the Soviet Union
Korea: 14 August 1945

         Charles Bonesteel




               Dean Rusk
Korea: North and South
North Korean Assault
Defense at Pusan
US Assault at Inchon
Initial Chinese Counter-Attack
Advance to the Yalu
Chinese Communist Assault
Second Invasion of South Korea
UN Counteroffensive
1951 – Early Offensives
1951 - Spring Offensives
1951 – Second Communist Wave
1951 – UN Offensive
1951 to 1953 - Stalemate
            1953 – 2008 Armistice




The Korean peninsula is the only place in the world where the
interests and security concerns of the United States, China, Japan,
and Russia directly intersect. Yet, despite the pressures of the major
powers, the independent-minded Koreans (North and South) have
demanded to take their future into their own hands as never before.
North Korea
       North Korea developed its own brand of
       communist Confucianism. It remains
       militarily powerful but economically
       isolated. Since the end of the Cold War
       it has lost the lavish subsidies it
       formerly received from the Soviet
       Union. And its once-close relationship
       with China has eroded as China
       becomes more interested in markets
       than Marxism. In the mid-1990s North
       Korea turned to the outside world for
       humanitarian assistance. Famine and
       poverty plague North Korea,
       periodically forcing it into a corner.
       Recently the North has taken small
       steps to reconcile with the South, while
       using the threat of its nuclear capability
       to gain concessions from the United
       States.
South Korea

       South Korea is an economic
       powerhouse, with the world's
       eleventh-largest economy and one of
       the world's primary producers of
       ships, automobiles, electronics, steel,
       and other goods.
       Its gross domestic product
       approaches one trillion dollars, and
       its per capita income is about
       $20,000 per year, twenty times that
       of North Korea.