What is North Korea, and how did Korea end up split in two?
The line that split Korea was chosen in August 1945 by two young US officers using a magazine map.
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is the country that occupies the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. It exists because, at the end of the Second World War in 1945, Korea was split into a Soviet zone in the north and a US zone in the south, and the two halves never rejoined.
The split began with a rush job. On 10 August 1945 two young US officers, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, were told to define an American at very short notice. They used a National Geographic map and picked the , because it cut the country about in half but left the capital, Seoul, on the American side. No experts on Korea were consulted. To the surprise of the Americans, the Soviet Union immediately accepted the line.
It was meant to be temporary, a step towards a joint . Instead, in 1948 each zone got its own government, the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north, and each claimed to rule the whole peninsula. In 1950 the North invaded the South. The war ended in a stalemate, and a strip about 250 kilometres long and 4 kilometres wide, the Korean , has divided the peninsula ever since.
2 Sep 1945
Soviet and US occupation zones begin
15 Aug 1948
Republic of Korea founded in the south
9 Sep 1948
Democratic People's Republic of Korea founded in the north
25 Jun 1950
North Korea invades the South
Today the two halves are very different. North Korea has been described as a totalitarian dictatorship with a around the Kim family, and the Workers' Party of Korea is its only ruling party. The two economies were level as late as 1976. In 2024, one estimate put North Korea's income per person at $1,317, against $36,965 in South Korea. Also in 2024, North Korea formally gave up on reunification and called South Korea a hostile state.
Quiz me
0/3
Recap
A temporary line drawn in 1945 hardened into two rival governments that each claimed all of Korea, and into a border that still divides the peninsula.
💡 A trick to remember it · A pencil line on a magazine map became a wall: drawn in an afternoon, still standing eighty years on.
Surprising fact · Two young US officers chose the 38th parallel in a hurry from a magazine map, and the Soviet Union accepted it at once.
Connects to
Sources (3)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (15 claims) cites at least one of these.