September 28, 1998
The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, located in the northern half of the Korean peninsula in East Asia, occupies a 47,000 square-mile area about the size of the state of Mississippi. North Korea is bounded on the north by the Manchuria region of the People's Republic of China, on the west by the Yellow Sea, and on the east by the Sea of Japan. North Korea's capital is Pyongyang, on the Taedong River. Other major cities are Hamhung, Chongjin, Wonsan, Nampo, and Kaesong.
Some 80 percent of North Korea consists of mountains separated by narrow valleys and small plains used for farming. Summers are brief, hot, and humid, winters long, dry, and often bitterly cold. The most rugged sections are the north and east coasts. When weather conditions have been favorable to agriculture, North Korea has produced rice, corn, potatoes, fruits, vegetables, and tobacco. Industries have produced steel, cement, textiles, petrochemicals, and machines.
North Korea is currently impoverished and its economy bankrupt. It has become the object of a major international humanitarian effort to alleviate the famine that began in 1995. A U.S. congressional team that visited North Korea in August 1998 estimated the famine has killed between 900,000 and 2.4 million in three years. Nations, relief agencies, and other organizations, including The United Methodist Church, have sent or pledged thousands of tons of food and medicine.
Its population of 23 million is ruled by a totalitarian, Stalinist regime. Since 1945, North Korea has been divided from the Republic of South Korea along the 38th parallel at what has become the world's most heavily fortified border. The two nations have been technically at war since the Korean War ended in 1953, since no formal treaty was signed. Hair-trigger tensions between the two Koreas and the presence at their common border of large opposing armies make the region a geopolitical flashpoint. North Korea now has the world's fourth-largest army, with a strength estimated at 1.2 million.
The people of North Korea share the same Korean ethnicity and language as those in South Korea. The Korean peninsula's first inhabitants migrated from the northwestern regions of Asia. They were peoples of a Tungusic branch of the Ural-Altaic language family. Some of these peoples also inhabited Manchuria. Korean is a Ural-Altaic language related to Japanese, and bears a remote relation to Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and Mongolian. Though dialects exist within Korean, the language is comprehensible throughout the peninsula.
Though North Korea is racially homogeneous and has no indigenous minorities, there is a Chinese community of about 50,000. It also has a population of about 1,800 Japanese wives whose husbands were among the 93,000 Koreans who returned to the North from Japan between 1959 and 1962.
Religions include Buddhism, Shamanism, Chongdogyo, and Christianity. The government has severely restricted religious activities since 1945. Christian missionaries came to Korea in the 1700s, but only in the 19th century did they begin to found schools, hospitals, and other institutions. Pyongyang and Seoul (now the South Korean capital) were key centers of 19th-century missionary activity. The northern region of the peninsula had a relatively large Christian population before 1945.
In the first century, Korea was divided into the kingdoms of Silla, Koguryo, and Paekche. The Silla kingdom unified the peninsula in 668 AD. The Silla dynasty gave way to the Koryo dynasty in 935. From the name Koryo, 16th-century Portuguese missionaries derived the name "Korea." The Choson dynasty displaced the Koryo in 1392 and ruled until 1910, when Japan annexed Korea.
In one respect, the history of Korea is a story of invasion and other forms of aggression by its neighbors. The Mongols occupied Korea from 1231 until the early 14th century. Japanese pirates raided Korea in 1359 and 1361. Hideyoshi, the leader who unified Japan, mounted major invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597.
When Korea faced the "gunboat" diplomacy of Western powers in the 19th century, the country turned inward, adopting a closed-door policy against other nations. It thus became known as the "Hermit Kingdom."
Although the Choson dynasty paid tribute to the Chinese court and acknowledged China's dominance in East Asia, Korea remained independent until the late 19th century when Korea was the focus of rivalries between neighboring nations.
First, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 broke out when China moved to forestall growing Japanese influence on the Korean peninsula. Japan won. Russian commercial gains in Korea led to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Japan was again the victor, and in 1910 annexed Korea as part of an expanding Japanese empire.
Even generations later, many Koreans recall the Japanese colonial administration as one of extraordinary physical brutality and repression. Tokyo kept tight control on Korean affairs and moved to suppress Korean language and culture. Organized Korean resistance in this period, including the March 1, 1919, Independence Movement, was unable to break Japan's hold, which continued until the World War II defeat of Japan in 1945.
It was Japan's surrender in August 1945 that led to the division of Korea and the bloodshed and tensions that have dominated the peninsula since. The use of two atomic bombs by the United States forced Japan to surrender abruptly and brought World War II to an early end.
The military need to occupy Japanese-held territory led to a division of the Korean peninsula into two occupation zones. U.S. forces were assigned the zone south of the 38th parallel, the Soviet Union the zone north. The division was to have been only temporary, until the U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union, and China could set up a trusteeship administration for Korea.
But a joint Soviet-American commission deadlocked over setting up a national government and by September 1947, with no solution near, the U.S. lodged the matter with the United Nations General Assembly. That November, the UN called for elections in Korea. However, the Soviet and Korean authorities in the north refused compliance with the UN action and blocked UN access to the north.
In the south, elections went forward under UN observation, and the Republic of Korea was established on August 15, 1948. Rhee Syngman, a Korean nationalist leader, became the republic's first president.
Only weeks later, on September 9, the north established the Democratic People's Republic of Korea under Premier Kim Il Sung. Kim had won a reputation for anti-Japanese guerilla activities in Manchuria in the 1930s. Both administrations claimed to be the only legitimate government on the peninsula. The stage was set for the Korean War.
On June 25, 1950, a massive North Korean invasion force struck south across the 38th parallel. The U.S. and 15 other nations came to the south's aid as part of a United Nations coalition. The Americans were the largest contingent. China backed its communist North Korean ally and poured a vast military force of "volunteers" into the conflict. Battle lines shifted back and forth in the early phases of the war but soon stabilized north of Seoul near the 38th parallel.
Although armistice talks were begun in July 1951, fighting continued for another two years and ended in military and diplomatic stalemate with the signing of an uneasy cease-fire on July 27, 1953. An estimated 10 million Koreans are still separated by the political division of the peninsula. Kim Il Sung died in 1994 and leadership passed to his reclusive son, Kim Jong Il.
In January 1988, the U.S. put North Korea on its list of states supporting international terrorism. That came after North Korean agents bombed a South Korean airliner, KAL flight 858, in November 1987, killing 115 people. Nevertheless, South Korea, the U.S., China, and other nations support steps toward the eventual reconciliation of the two Koreas.
The U.S. has no diplomatic, consular, or trade relations with North Korea, but there have been cultural, academic, and diplomatic exchanges between the two nations.
South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, has announced a "sunshine policy" aimed at fostering better and more open relations with the North. Kim has also called on the U.S. to ease the almost blanket sanctions it maintains on North Korea. The Clinton Administration has said that any easing of sanctions should turn on whether North Korea keeps its promise not to develop nuclear weapons.
But President Clinton has otherwise praised Kim's engagement policy and said in June 1998 that the U.S. will support "a policy of reciprocity, which would enable us to move forward with the reconciliation of the North and the South. We strongly support South Korea's efforts to find common ground with North Korea."
Meanwhile, the international community remains concerned that North Korea may be developing nuclear weapons. North Korea's development, testing, and exporting of ballistic missiles are also issues of concern. The U.S. is trying to get North Korea to sit down for peace talks with South Korea and China to replace the 1953 armistice with a formal peace pact.
Public Domain Map from the Perry-Castaņeda Library Map Collection
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