North Korea, South Korea, US, Japan: A Study in Conflict Resolution

This essay delves into the significant role of negotiation and diplomacy in addressing the complex conflicts surrounding North Korea, including its interactions with South Korea, the United States, and Japan. It provides a historical overview of the Korean peninsula, from its division into North and South Korea to the Korean War, highlighting the influence of China, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The essay examines key events such as the division at the 38th parallel, the involvement of the UN, the outbreak of the Korean War, and the roles of key figures like Kim Il-sung and Syngman Rhee. It further analyzes the military strategies employed, including the Incheon landing, and the intervention of China. The essay concludes by emphasizing the challenges and efforts in achieving peace and the importance of negotiation in resolving the ongoing tensions in the region. It underscores the need for peaceful resolutions through diplomatic channels.

Dispute and problem solving is a matter of utmost importance in the field of
negotiation.
Solving a problem involves some type of negotiation, which leads to an agreement.
A clear example and which we will use in this work will be the topic on North Korea,
its conflicts with South Korea, the United States and Japan, and how it is that today
they are kept in peace thanks to documents which all parties they signed to
maintain an atmosphere of peace between them.
The Korean peninsula is a region in East Asia that is divided almost in half into two
almost completely different countries; North Korea and South Korea, but it was not
always like this, in fact 71 years ago these two countries did not exist, and instead
there was a single territory called Korea. The Kingdom of Korea was an isolated
place from the world and almost no one had an interest in it, except for its
neighbors China and Japan. In 1894, China and Japan faced each other in the
First Japanese Chinese War, since both wanted to have control and influence over
the territory of Korea. A year later, that war was won by Japan, and for the next 10
years, Japan continued to seize the Korean territory mercilessly. At the beginning
of the 20th century, between 1904 and 1905, another neighbor of the area with his
own interests entered to defend the Koreans from the war against the Japanese,
but in this new war, there were only many deaths and no definitive winner, but that
Yes, Russia began to influence a group of guerrillas who years later would adopt
communist ideas and fight against the Japanese to defend Korea. Years passed
and we reached the second world war between 1939 and 1945, by this time, while
in Europe most of the important battles were fought, in East Asia, Japan had
become a powerful empire that crushed the weakest territories to colonize them
like Korea, where men were killed or enslaved and women were raped. The
Japanese were so cruel to the Korean people that they even changed their
surnames to Japanese surnames and were forbidden to speak Korean, because
they practically wanted to completely disappear their culture and traditions.
In 1945 the United States defeated Japan by dropping two atomic bombs on its
territory and the end of the Second World Cup had arrived. The problem is that
now the winners of the war had to decide how to divide the territories of the losers;

Among the winners of the war were the United States with imperialist ideas and the
Soviet Union with communist ideas, among the losers were for example Germany,
which was divided in half, to the west influenced by the United States and to the
east by the Soviet Union , and among the territories to be divided from Asia, were
the Korean peninsula that had been rescued from the Japanese at the end of the
war, but now it was left to decide who was going to keep it.
The Soviet Union was already installed in the northern part and the United States
had already taken the southern part, the division was made on the 38th parallel,
but both wanted to control the entire peninsula, and in 1947, the United Nations-led
UN proposed Make elections to democratically define the president of all Korea,
but the Soviet Union did not think this idea and the selections were carried out only
in the southern part of Korea. In 1948 Syngman Rhee became the first president-
elect of South Korea, and although Syngman was Korean by birth, for many years
he lived, studied, and made a political career in the United States. He practically
implied that the United States put him there because it aligned with his political
ideology. For its part, the Soviet Union did something similar and they put Kim il
sung as a leader in North Korea, who had been born in Korea and during the
Second World War he was part of the communist army that fought against the
Japanese and obviously being Korean but Being alienated from communist
ideology, it was in the interest of the Soviet Union to keep it in power and thus
maintain its influence over this territory. Thus, the Soviet Union began to reinforce
the image of Kim il sung as a national hero of Korea and in September 1948 Kim il
sung created the Democratic People's Republic of Korea better known as North
Korea. But in addition to creating this new country, I also create the institutions,
political party and army made up of its comrades on the battlefield in the war,
which made North Korea what it is today. In addition to creating a federation of art
and literature, with which the government could maintain and control the culture
and influence over its inhabitants through art, literature and the media, a cult of the
personality of Kim Il Sung was created, highlighting his achievements, its history
and its charisma to almost religious and sacred dimensions.

Going back to 1948, North Korea with its capital in Pyongyang City and South
Korea with its capital in Seoul each already had their president, and one might
think that the problems would have ended here, but it did not. In fact it was here
where the real problems started, since these two countries being divided on the
38th parallel, both presidents had in mind to take the other part of the Korean
territory and rule the entire peninsula. This rivalry sparked one of the bloodiest
wars in history, becoming almost the third world war.
Going back to 1948, both the President of North Korea and the President of South
Korea were dissatisfied with only ruling a part of the Korean peninsula, both
wanted to reunite their people and create a single republic, but neither was willing
to cede power or political system to the other, so things began to heat up between
the two Korea for the next two years, and although both parties assure that the
other attacked first, on June 25, 1950 a battle broke out between the two Korea on
the 38th parallel, which marked the beginning of the Korean war.
Within hours, the northern army had already penetrated southern territory and was
headed to Seoul, the capital of South Korea. With a group of 230 Russian tanks
and an army trained by the Soviet Union. For its part, the army of South Korea
trained by the United States, realized that the enemy was much stronger than
them, so they fled from the city of Seoul to the south, and in desperation to stop the
passage From the army of the north, they exploited the bridge that crosses the
Hang river, but they did it when there were people crossing the bridge to flee from
the capital, and with this they caused the death of thousands of refugees and
soldiers from the south. Meanwhile, three days after the invasion of North Korea by
the 38th parallel, on June 28, 1950, the North Army had already seized Seoul, and
the next step was to continue advancing throughout the peninsula until conquering
all of Korea. from the south. Given this situation, the UN identified North Korea as
an aggressor and decided to send military support to defend South Korea. Among
the countries that sent soldiers to the Korean war to help South Korea, were
Australia, Thailand, France and Colombia in addition to other countries, but of all
the allies the country that sent the most soldiers to South Korea was states. united

with 300,000 soldiers. In addition to this, the UN assigned a US commander as the
leader of the UN army; General Douglas Mcurnety, who already had extensive
experience directing battles in Asia during World War II and was now in charge of
directing all UN allies against North Korea.
During the first weeks of the war, everything seemed to indicate that North Korea
would win without any problem, since the UN army was weak, with outdated
weapons and destroyed morale, so they surrendered in every battle. Thanks to
this, North Korea managed to advance to the south of the peninsula, recovering
almost all of Korea, entrenching the UN army at the southeast tip of the Korean
peninsula, making it use the river as a barrier to stop the passage to the army of
the north.
Over the next six weeks, the river became the battle line that neither of the two
armies managed to cross. While this was happening, General Douglas Mcunrty
was already planning a surprise counter attack, which was to surround the
peninsula with a group of American soldiers and enter the port of Incheon with an
amphibious invasion to recover the city of Seoul and thus cut supplies of the
Korean army that was to the south. The problem with this plan is that the entrance
to Seoul was very complicated, because when the tide went out everything turned
to mud and the boats could get stuck. They only had a couple of hours a day while
the tide was high to be able to enter successfully and in case of failure the mission
would be a failure and they could lose the war completely. For this reason, many
members of the army were suspicious of the strategy, but the general of Mcuntry
was determined to take that risk and on September 7, 1950, 75,000 troops began
to go, in 250 ships from the port of Pusan, to the perimeter. from Incheon.
The famous battle of Incheon, lasted 5 days, between September 15 and 19, 1950
and despite all the risks, the invasion was a success with which they managed to
advance from the port of Incheon to the city of Seoul on the 25th of In September
the UN army managed to recover the capital of South Korea and cut the supply
lines of the North Korean army that was still fighting south in Pusan.
After recovering Seoul the conditions of the war had turned, the UN soldiers were
now stronger than the North Korean Army, and by the end of September, they had

already recovered practically all of South Korea and now President Syngman Rhee
he wanted to conquer the northern part and thus reunite the two Korea under his
rules.
By October 19, the UN had already conquered the capital of North Korea, and they
continued to advance with the intention of reaching the Yalu River, which is the
border river between China and North Korea. The UN troops were already
celebrating the victory and many were preparing to return home, but they did not
count on the fact that China had just created the Communist Republic of China,
with a government similar to that of the Soviet Union and North Korea and the the
fact that the UNO led by the enemy of China, seizing its neighbor and friend North
Korea, put the new government of Mao tse tung at great risk. So from the moment
the UN crossed the 38th parallel border to the north, China sent an army of
200,000 soldiers who hid in the mountains of North Korea and took the UN
battalions by surprise.
After a series of battles in that area, the war line changed course to the south and
from then on the rest of the war was practically stuck at parallel 38.
Starting in 1951, the Korean war that had started at the 38th parallel had been
parked in the same place where it started, and both parties continued to attack
their adversary for two years full of threats and fear, since both sides They were
considering attacking with nuclear weapons like the ones the United States had
used in World War II. At the same time they avoided it because they were aware
that this war could escalate to devastating dimensions and thus become a third
world war.
Between 1952 and 1953 fighting continued to claim the lives of thousands of
soldiers and civilians as talks took place about reaching a truce between north and
south korea. After many negotiations, finally on July 27, 1953, the armistice
agreement was signed between both parties. That document means that although
the war has not officially ended until today, at least with that document, both parties
agree not to attack their enemy again.

Another thing that was agreed in those negotiations was the delimitation of the new
border between the two countries, which was very similar to the 38th parallel
border.
With what we have previously read, we can say that the main enemies of North
Korea are: South Korea, Japan and the United States. As many of us know, all
these problems were carried out many, many years ago and many things have
changed with respect to North Korea, but there is still a border that divides the
Korean peninsula.
Currently a couple of years ago after decades of tension, confrontations and failed
negotiations between the United States and North Korea, finally the leaders of both
nations committed to work towards the complete denuclearization of the Korean
peninsula. This was agreed in Singapore, where the leaders of these countries met
for the first time and agreed that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear program while
Washington guarantees their survival.
After a meeting of more than 4 hours, the leaders finally signed a declaration
where they commit to cooperate to develop new relationships and end the last
legacy of the cold war.