LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Korean War: South Korea
built 230 days ago
Korean War - conflict between Communist and non-Communist forces in Korea from June 25, 1950, to July 27, 1953. At the end of World War II, Korea was divided at the 38th parallel into Soviet (North Korean) and U.S. (South Korean) zones of occupation. In 1948 rival governments were established: The Republic of Korea was proclaimed in the South and the People's Democratic Republic of Korea in the North.
Source:
The war began on June 25 when the North Korean army, substantially equipped by the Soviet Union, crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. The United States immediately responded by sending supplies to Korea, and it quickly broadened its commitment in the conflict. On June 27 the UN Security Council, with the Soviet Union voluntarily absent, passed a US-sponsored resolution calling for military sanctions against North Korea. Three days later, US President Harry S. Truman ordered combat forces stationed in Japan deployed to Korea. American forces, those of South Korea, and, ultimately, combat contingents from Australia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Great Britain, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey, with medical units from Denmark, India, and Sweden, were placed under a unified UN command headed by the US commander in chief in the Far East, General Douglas MacArthur. The participating ground forces of these nations, the United States, and South Korea were grouped in the US Eighth Army.
Source:
The Korean War originated in the division of Korea into South Korea and North Korea after World War II (1939-1945). Efforts to reunify the peninsula after the war failed, and in 1948 the South proclaimed the Republic of Korea and the North established the People’s Republic of Korea. In 1949 border fighting broke out between the North and the South. On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces crossed the dividing line and invaded the South. Soon, in defense of the South, the United States joined the fighting under the banner of the United Nations (UN), along with small contingents of British, Canadian, Australian, and Turkish troops. In October 1950 China joined the war on the North’s side.
Source:
The Korean War, the first shooting conflict of the Cold War, remained confined to the Korean peninsula. The fact that it did not expand into a wider war helped confirm the West's policy of containment of Communism, a policy which dominated most international relations during the Cold War. Was containment a misguided policy? On the one hand, it prevented a major war. On the other hand, it led to a seemingly endless string of small, bloody battles all over the world: Cuba, Central Africa, South East Asia, Afghanistan, and many others. Containment ... led to massive infusions of economic and military aid by leading nations of both the Communist and Western worlds into developing nations considered to be of strategic importance, while others were bypassed.
Source:
The Korean War was the result of the division of Korea, a country with a well-recognized, ancient integrity. Despite its long history as an independent kingdom, Korea had been forcibly annexed by Japan in 1910. Japan controlled Korea up to the end of World War II. Late on the night of August 10, 1945, as World War II was coming to a close, the United States made the decision that it would occupy the southern half of Korea. The U.S. government did so out of fear that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union)—which had joined the fight against Japan in northern Korea a week earlier—would take control of the entire Korea Peninsula. American planners chose to divide Korea at the 38th parallel because it would keep the capital city, Seoul, in the American-occupied southern zone; the USSR acquiesced to the division, with no official comment.
Source:
A war... called the Korean conflict, fought in the early 1950s between the United Nations, supported by the United States, and the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). The war began in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea. The United Nations declared North Korea the aggressor and sent military aid to the South Korean army. President Harry S. Truman declared the war a “police action” because he never asked Congress to pass an official declaration of war. He thereby established a precedent for President Lyndon Johnson, who committed troops to the Vietnam War without ever seeking a congressional mandate for his action.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
South Korea