A peninsula half born in 1948 still faces its twin across a parallel
North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, occupies the northern Korean Peninsula between China and Russia along the Yalu and Tumen and South Korea along a heavily fortified border. Separate governments rose in 1948 after Soviet and American occupation zones hardened.
Paleolithic habitation and early kingdoms noted in Chinese records by the seventh century BCE precede Silla–Balhae unification, Goryeo, and Joseon rule before Japanese protectorate status in 1905 and annexation. Japan, fresh from beating Qing China and then Russia, made Korea a protectorate in 1905 and annexed it in 1910, suppressing its language and culture and provoking the March First protests of 1919.
After Japan’s 1945 surrender the peninsula split near the 38th parallel. Soviet forces left the north in 1948; most U. S. troops left the south in 1949. Northern troops crossed into the South on 25 June 1950 and overran most of it. Because the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council, the UN authorised a US-led command that pushed deep into the North until Chinese forces intervened. The 1950 northern invasion opened the Korean War until the 1953 armistice froze lines near today’s Demilitarized Zone.
Officially a communist state that calls itself socialist, it is widely described as a totalitarian hereditary dictatorship centred on a personality cult of the Kim family, and Amnesty International rates its human rights situation the worst in the world. An active-duty force of about 1.28 million ranks fourth worldwide, and the country fields nuclear weapons. UN membership came in 1991.
The spelling Korea first surfaces in 1671, in the travel account of Hendrick Hamel, a Dutch East India Company sailor. Northern speech prefers Chosŏn; the south says Hanguk—echoes of older names for one land. In 1948 the North took the formal name Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, often shortened at home to simply the Republic. Both governments long claimed to rule all of Korea, so northerners regard themselves as Koreans and discourage visitors from calling them North Koreans.
Source: North Korea
