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While South Korea has often been less democratic than Americans would like or the Korean leaders claimed it to be, since the fall of its military dictatorship in the late s democracy appears to have become increasingly consolidated in the R.

South Korea recovered rapidly from the Asian financial crisis of and is currently the third-largest economy in Eastern Asia, after Japan and China. As in many other countries, American popular culture is an important presence in South Korea.

To a lesser extent, Japanese popular culture is influential as well. However, South Korea has developed its own distinctly Korean forms of popular culture, while traditional Korean culture has undergone something of a revival in recent decades.

By the late s and early s, South Korean pop music, film, and television dramas were becoming quite popular in other parts of Asia too, especially China and Vietnam. Despite the general cultural homogeneity of Korea, regional sentiment has become an important factor in South Korean politics and in other areas of contemporary life.

The main regional division is between the Cholla area of the southwest and the Kyongsang area of the southeast. Although some would claim that these regional differences go back to the ancient Three Kingdoms period, in fact modern South Korean regionalism is mostly a phenomenon originating in the rapid industrialization that began in the s. Meanwhile, Cholla remained relatively backward and was seen as a place of dissenters, including long-time opposition figure Kim Dae Jung.

After Kim Dae Jung became president in , he attempted to bring more regional balance to economic and political development in South Korea, but regional identification and prejudice remain strong.

The division of Korea into North and South was imposed upon the Korean people by outside forces, and many if not most Koreans insist that the two Koreas must one day be reunited. In the early s, mids, and early s, the two Koreas appeared to be reaching breakthroughs in inter-Korean relations, but each movement toward reconciliation and reunification ended in frustration.

This was the first time such a summit meeting had ever taken place, and the event once again raised expectations of reconciliation and eventual reunion between the two halves of the divided peninsula. However, there is still very little contact between the governments or the people of North and South Korea, and barring a dramatic turn of events, the hope for reunification appears to be a long way off.

In addition to the 46 million people in South Korea and 23 million in the North, some 6 to 7 million people of Korean descent, or approximately 10 percent of the population of the two Koreas combined, live outside the Korean peninsula. The largest communities of overseas Koreans are in China two million , the United States over one million , Japan , , and the former Soviet Union , , mostly in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Korean diaspora is distinctive both for its relative size and the fact that it is almost entirely a twentieth-century phenomenon, with the exception of Koreans in China and Russia, who began to immigrate there in large numbers in the s.

There were no Koreans in U. Koreans were first brought to Hawaii in as workers in the sugarcane fields. Later, Koreans settled increasingly on the U. Finally, after more than two years of negotiations, the adversaries signed an armistice on July 27, The Korean War was relatively short but exceptionally bloody. Nearly 5 million people died. Almost 40, Americans died in action in Korea, and more than , were wounded.

But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Korea was split in half after World War II. Japan ruled over Korea from until the end of World War II, after which the Soviet Union occupied the northern half of the peninsula and the United States occupied the south. Originally, they intended to keep Korea together as However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one.

The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The instability created in Europe by the First World War set the stage for another international conflict—World War II—which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating.

Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf On September 15, , during the Korean War , U. Marines force made a surprise amphibious landing at the strategic port of Inchon, on the west coast of Korea, about miles south of the 38th parallel and 25 miles from Seoul.

The location had been criticized as too To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www. Report an error.

Journalistic Standards. About The Star. If you do not yet have a Torstar account, you can create one now it is free Sign In. Conversations are opinions of our readers and are subject to the Code of Conduct. The Star does not endorse these opinions. More Life. Top Stories. One of the lesser-known problems for North Korea's agricultural sector is its difficulties getting sufficient fertiliser to improve crop yields. A letter from Kim Jong-un in reminded leaders of the agricultural sector that they should find alternative easily-available sources of fertiliser.

The country is not self-sufficient in fertiliser production, and according to Nikkei Asia in February, one of its major factories producing among other things fertiliser had to shut down due to a lack of spare parts.

That has been blamed on the closure of the border with its largest trading partner China in January , because of the Covid pandemic. International economic sanctions means trade with other countries is already extremely limited.

Satellite imagery on both sides of the border at Sinuiju and Dandong shows a significant reduction in vehicle traffic compared with It provides evidence to show the border has probably been closed to trade, according to a report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies CSIS. The researchers counted more than vehicles in customs areas in September - but only 15 in March However, more rail carriages were sighted in March compared to photos of the same location in the past two years.

Since then, there's been no indication the border will open properly any time soon, according to North Korea watchers. Closed borders have also made it difficult for North Korea to get food aid, which is exempt from the sanctions.

Aid flows into the country from donor nations have been inadequate for the last decade, the UN says.