2 pages comparing summary

Summary:

The Democratic People’s Republic or North Korea is a unique country both in inception and governmental structures. It has been in the news recently for a plethora of bad incidents involving their military and current leader Kim Jong-un’s agenda. To understand how the country got to where it is one needs to go back to before the First World War to when the Korean peninsula was owned by Japan through military coercion.

Japan’s ownership of the country due to its military force, predictably lost control of Korea after the devastating events of World War II. After Japan surrendered and the Allies claimed victory Korea was occupied by the United States and Soviet Russia. Russia received the Northern half and the United States the Southern, this in turn brings one to the first issue that North Korea faces to this day and that was the forced regionalization. By the instruction of the United Nations, the two halves were to hold elections to establish independent governments in both halves with the middle being a de-militarized zone (DMZ). The UN deemed that South Korea was the only one in the region with a legitimate government post elections. This became a problem for North Korea and only furthered their perceived unfairness of the regionalization of the Korean peninsula.

The second issue facing the country, also to this day, is the violence that stemmed from the regionalization. The UN deciding that South Korea was the only legitimate government did not sit well with North Korea and many believe this was the main factor in the beginning of the Korean War. The Korean War was only the beginning of North Korea’s violent tendencies, as is the norm with military-states. Terrorist attacks, planned assassinations and violent acts towards South Korea became a staple of North Korea over the years and in line with this unfortunate trend was an incident by the name of the Axe Murder Incident that involved two American soldiers being murdered for attempting to cut down a poplar tree in the DMZ. This incident almost incited a war between the U.S., South Korea and North Korea and instead evolved into Operation Paul Bunyan where the U.S. and South Korean armies completed the cutting down of the tree. While violence loomed large the third issue was out of the citizens control in the form of a famine.

The North Korean famine or the Arduous March was a famine that killed reportedly millions of North Koreans from 1994 to 1998. It was caused by North Korea’s over dependence on Soviet Russia, and then when the Soviet Union fell, an overdependence on China. The Soviet Union fell and China experienced their own famine and in-turn the people of North Korea were left with nothing and to make matters worse they faced near catastrophic floods and droughts at the same time. The economic planning from the government could have prevented this authoritarian regime remained near un-phased by the experience.

North Korea is a communist country under complete control of an authoritarian dictatorship and while that may be the root of the country’s issues, one also needs to look at the three factors of: regionalization, violence and famine that the citizens have faced since the inception of the country.