Composite: Park Tae-hyun/AP / Getty
North and South Korea share a language and traditional culture, but politically their modern history is one of conflict and division. The Korean peninsula, a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, was roughly divided in two along the 38th parallel by US and Soviet occupying forces at the end of the second world war. In 1948, North Korea was established by Kim Il-sung – the first of three generations of the Kim dynasty to have ruled the country with an iron fist. The South, a US ally, was proclaimed a republic the same year.
Tensions boiled over in 1950, when North Korea launched an attack on the South – the opening salvo in what would become a bloody three-year conflict, with the North supported by China and the Soviet Union and the South by a US-dominated United Nations force. The war ended in 1953 in an uneasy truce, but not a peace treaty, and a demilitarised zone (DMZ) was established as a buffer between the communist North and capitalist South.
Almost 70 years since the end of the Korean war, the two countries remain divided along the same lines by the DMZ, a 2.5-mile (4km) wide and 155-mile (249km) long strip of land centred on the “truce village” of Panmunjom. The area has been the scene of occasional skirmishes but is perhaps best known for its blue UN huts, where the two sides have traditionally met for talks during rare periods of détente.
Today, the landmine-strewn DMZ is the world’s most heavily fortified border and serves as a reminder that North and South Korea are technically still at war. Relations between the neighbours have alternated between engagement and estrangement, and even conflict. While both sides continue to refer to the eventual unification of the peninsula,the prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough are grim. Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea has defied international sanctions to develop a nuclear deterrent that he has shown no sign of wanting to give up.
