Needless to say, South Korea is known worldwide not only for its rapid modern technological advances but also its urbanization. Korea shows tremendous economic development. Korea is recognized as one of the countries that developed fastest out of the scrapped economy from war.
Did you know that the Korean War has never officially ended?
Korea has existed in an uneasy armistice with its adversary North Korea to the north for 70 years.
Korea is only divided country in the world by ideology.
We can experience the reality of national division and extant adversary confrontation between South and North Korea at Imjingak.
Currently, the closest you can safely get to North Korea is to visit the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and the closest such point to us is at Imjingak, about 50km north of Seoul.
To appreciate the tour of Imjingak, it is necessary to understand at least a brief history of how the Korean Peninsula was divided.
Korea had very little to do with its current divided state. It has been a united country under from Unified Silla Dynasty in 668 through the Joseon Dynasty for more than 1300 years until 1910,
Japan, after signing a protectorate treaty with Korea in 1905, then annexed the country in 1910 and ruled until the end of World War II in 1945, a period of great civil unrest.
Korea had been colony of Japan for 36 years until the end of World War II in 1945.
With the end of WWII, the Japanese Empire was dismantled and Korea was arbitrarily divided into North and South at the 38th parallel, part of the spoils of war. Korea had no part in this decision-making, which was determined by the Allied Powers. The division was meant to be temporary, with the U.S.S.R. accepting Japan’s surrender in the north and the U.S. in the south. Instead, Korea became another casualty of the Cold War as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. then were unable to agree on how to reunify the country, eventually sponsoring separate elections in the north and south.
In 1948 North and South Korea were permanently divided without their consent, with the U.S.S.R. backing communist dictator Kim Il-Sung in the North and the South falling under the leadership of U.S.-backed leader Syngman Rhee. Both leader’s “elections” are thought to have been manipulated by their respective backing countries, and both elected governments then claimed to represent the entire Korean Peninsula. However, the South became the “Republic of Korea” (ROK) and the North the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (DPRK), with the 2.5 mile-wide DMZ in between.
Though the nations have been divided for more than 70 years, North Korea figures heavily in South Korean media.
Imjingak, the site of a Peace Park and a gondola that crosses the Imjin River into a tiny piece of the DMZ. We had to show our Alien Registration Card (ARC) and sign in at a desk in order to buy tickets for the gondola.
Neither the DPRK nor the ROK accepted the arbitrary separation of their country in 1948, and in June 1950, with the backing of the U.S.S.R. and China, the North invaded the South. This began the Korean War, which was an effort by North Korea to re-unify the Korean Peninsula under communist rule.
With the advantage of surprise, the DPRK quickly overtook Seoul only in 3 days and advanced across the ROK. The United States and then the United Nations came to the aid of the South, but the ensuing war was long and destructive, with approximately 3 million fatalities, a large proportion of them were civilian. Both sides engaged in mass killings of civilians and the torture and starvation of prisoners of war. Seoul was captured on four separate occasions. Both North and South Korea were largely destroyed and had to begin rebuilding from the ground up when the fighting finally stopped.
In July 1953, the war ceased not with a peace treaty but with an armistice agreement that created the Korean DMZ along the 38th Parallel. Neither country gained any significant territory through the conflict. The armistice solidified the separation of the two countries which technically remain at war. Although most prisoners of war were returned, families that were divided by remaining on different sides of the 38th parallel had no recourse for reunification.