Korean War: 38th Parallel

The latitude line passing between the North and the South has separated generations of families

North and South Korea have been divided for more than 70 years, ever since the Korean Peninsula became an unexpected casualty of the escalating Cold War between two rival superpowers: the Soviet Union and the United States.

Find out how much you know about the conflict sometimes called "The Forgotten War" in the United States.

I CONFERRED Sunday evening with the Secretaries of State and Defense, their senior advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the situation in the Far East created by unprovoked aggression against the Republic of Korea.

38th parallel, popular name given to latitude 38° N that in East Asia roughly demarcates North Korea and South Korea. The line was chosen by U.S. military planners at the Potsdam Conference (July 1945) near the end of World War II as an army boundary, north of which the U.S.S.R. was to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces in Korea and south of which the Americans were to accept the Japanese surrender.

On July 27, 1953, an armistice agreement brought fighting, though not the war itself, to an end in Korea. One legacy of that 50-year-old ceasefire has been the 250-km-long (148-mile) truce line bisecting the Korean Peninsula into northern and southern halves. The armistice provided for a 4-km-wide (2.5-mile) buffer zone running west to east roughly along the 38th parallel. This buffer zone contains river deltas and grasslands toward its western end, but is mostly mountainous terrain in the east.

Scholarly debate about the reasons for Korea's division at the 38th parallel in August 1945 has not been particularly intense...

While the first year of the 1950-53 Korean War was marked by major offensives, campaigns, and retreats, the last two years of the war saw fighting along the main line of resistance (MLR...

...Captive of the Cold War: The Decision to Divide Korea at the 38th Parallel James I. Matray The author is visiting assistant professor in New Mexico State...

...FALL, 1951 33 Two Korean Villages: Culture Contact at the 38th Parallel* David L. Olmsted** The term applied anthropology has come to refer to at- A little...

.... It never disappeared, even after reshaped by battle after the Korean War. This 1945 division of Korea reflects little United States forethought about Korea's strategic...