The Partition of the Korean Peninsula

The Yalta Conference is best known for planning the division of Germany after Nazi surrender, but by drawing the Soviet Union into the Pacific theater of World War II, it also laid the groundwork for the partition of the Korean peninsula along the 38th parallel. Cold War tensions were high when the communist North invaded the capitalist South in 1950, setting off the Korean War, which ended in a stalemate and an unchanged border. This intriguing volume explains this lesser-known portion of World War II and Cold War history, from the Soviet influence on Japan's surrender in World War II to the creation of the two Korean countries we know today, while exploring how these circumstances brought us to the current strained political landscape.