Question

essay on North Korea

Answer 1



It would probably be accurate to state that for many Americans, North Korea is a rather mysterious nation. In part, this may due to the nature of the information presented by the American media; and in part, it is because North Korea's own will to remain isolated within the world. This sample history essay explores the history, politics, and international relations of North Korea, as a means of improving general awareness regarding the nature of this nation.

Historical overview of North Korea, including the origins of the nation itselfInternal politics of North Korea, including its governmental and leadership structuresRelationship between North Korea and other nations in the world, including (of course) the United StatesImplications of this overview for the contemporary world

North Korea: A historical overview

In order to trace the nation of North Korea back to its origins, it is necessary to turn back to World War II. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has briefly summarized the history of the origins of North Korea in the following way:

"An independent kingdom for much of its long history, Korea was occupied by Japan beginning in 1905 following the Russo-Japanese War. Five years later, Japan formally annexed the entire peninsula. Following World War II, Korea was split with the northern half coming under Soviet-sponsored control" ("Background" section).

The great divide

An important implication of this fact is that the division of North Korea and South Korea is strictly political in nature and does not correspond to any more deeply ingrained ethnological differences. This is different from many of the national divisions that can be found on the African continent, which is quite arbitrary from an ethnologicalperspective. The peninsula of Korea was unified over the course of the vast majority of its history, and the division of the North from the South is a relatively recent one.

It is worth looking more closely, though, at why the political reasons why the division occurred. As Lee has indicated, the Cairo Declaration found the major Allied Powers agreeing that the independence of Korea should be restored after World War II. However, a "trusteeship" scheme was devised, ostensibly to ensure the secure transition from Japanese rule to independence. At the time, cooperation seemed possible, since the United States and the Soviet Union were in fact allies during World War II. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, though, it proved impossible to reach a workable consensus with respect to exactly how the implementation of the trusteeship scheme should produce. This led to a de facto political situation in which the southern half of the Korean peninsula increasingly came under the sphere of influence of the United States, while the northern half of the peninsula increasingly came under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. This division was consolidated with the creation of two independent Korean nation-states in the year 1948.

The fact that this division would prove to be an antagonistic one became clear in the year 1950, when North Korea launched an invasion of South Korea, with the intention of reunifying the peninsula. This was the beginning of what came to be known as the Korean War, and this event was responsible for the crystallization of some of the main antagonisms that would persist throughout the Cold War (see Office of the Historian). In particular, it became clear that South Korea, supported by the United States and Europe, would belong to the Western bloc; and that North Korean, supported by the Soviet Union and Communist China, would belong to the Eastern bloc. This distinction would thereafter become far more important within the context of the modern world than the fact that the division of the Korean peninsula was such a recent one, with no historical, cultural, or ethnological differences meaningfully marking off the people of the one nation from the people of the other.

Answer 2

Answer:

Explanation:

Mark me as the brainliest

North Korea is an living hell