United States in Korean War

US involvement in the Korean War

While the end of WWII meant to bring peace between the United States and the Soviet Union, there were tensions arising between the two countries, right after the end of the Cold War. America feared the spread of communism from the Soviets to other countries and knowing that America could be one of those countries, it centered its foreign policy on containment of communism. Even though the the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine suggested that the policy should stay within Europe, America extended it towards Asia and that was when the major battle, the Korean War, broke out concerning this policy of containment by the United States. In 1950, Korea peninsula was divided into two different parts, North Korea which was backed by the Soviet Union and South Korea which backed by the United States. This division had started right after World War II when Soviet Union in August 1945. When Soviet Union invaded Korea, it had been under the control of Japan since 1910. United States feared that the Soviet Union would capture the whole peninsula, and so they went into South Korea. Just after a short while, the Japanese surrendered on both sides. Korea was then divided along the 38th parallel. After 1946, Kim II Sun organized a communist government in the North of Korea known as the Democratic People's Republic which made this line more rigid. A rival government was set up in the south by Syngman Rhee known as the Republic of Korea. War broke out on June 25, 1950 and North Korean troops began attacking and soon after troops from the South also began attacking. President Truman did not even wait for a formal declaration of war by the congress. When North Korea invaded the South, American troops defended the anti-communist part of the country because President Truman was afraid and did not want to lose another country to communism. In 1953, the war finally came to an end with about 5 million soldiers dead. Both South and North Korea signed an agreement which drew a new boundary near the 38th parallel that gave South Korea an extra 1500 square miles of territory  and created a
2-mile-wide “demilitarized zone” that still exists today.