The division of Korea is a legacy of the Cold War. Japan annexed the Korean peninsula in 1910, and the country spent the next 35 years under oppressive colonial rule. After Japan's defeat in World War II in 1945, Korea was liberated, but the division between the Soviet-backed North and the U.S.-backed South began to take shape.
This is the second part of a two-part article marking the signing of the armistice that ended fighting in the three-year Korean War and left the Korean peninsula divided at the 38th parallel. The division at the 38th parallel was meant to be temporary, but as tensions between the two Koreas and their allies escalated, the division became more entrenched.
Seventy years after the Korean War's outbreak, the peninsula is teetering on the precipice of yet another North-South crisis. The demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas remains one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world, with both sides maintaining a high state of readiness.
Earlier this week, the world turned its eyes on North Korea as President Trump met with the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, in Singapore. The meeting, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, raised hopes of a breakthrough in the long-stalled peace process on the Korean peninsula.
Seventy years ago, on June 25, 1950, North Korean tanks rolled across the 38th parallel, the line that separated communist North Korea from U.S.-backed South Korea, sparking the Korean War. The conflict, which lasted three years, resulted in the deaths of millions of people and left the Korean peninsula devastated.
635,000 is a number that is hard to comprehend. But it was very real for those residing in the Korean peninsula from 1950 to 1953, as the war's toll on civilians was immense. Families were torn apart, cities were reduced to rubble, and the scars of the conflict remain to this day.
LAKELAND - Grady Littles was three months short of his 18th birthday when he joined a segregated Army. He was 20 when he saw his first combat in the Korean War, where he witnessed the horrors of war firsthand. Littles' experiences are just one example of the countless stories of sacrifice and suffering during the conflict.
China and the US fought their first major war against each other during the Korean War. China's ill-equipped volunteer troops suffered huge casualties, but their intervention in the conflict helped to turn the tide in favor of North Korea. The war ended in a stalemate in 1953, with the signing of an armistice that left the Korean peninsula divided and unresolved.
