38TH PARALLEL

 38TH PARALLEL

In 1910, Japan formally annexed the Korean Peninsula, which it had occupied five years earlier following the Russo-Japanese War. Over the next 35 years of colonial rule, the country modernized and industrialized significantly, but many Koreans suffered brutal repression at the hands of Japan’s military regime. During World War II, Japan sent many Korean men to the front as soldiers or forced them to work in wartime factories, while thousands of young Korean women became “comfort women,” providing sexual services to Japanese soldiers. Upon Japan’s defeat in 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union divided the peninsula into two zones of influence along the the 38th parallel, or 38 degrees north latitude. In 1948, the pro-U.S. Republic of Korea (or South Korea) was established in Seoul, led by the strongly anti-communist Syngman Rhee. In the northern industrial center of Pyongyang, the Soviets installed the dynamic young communist guerrilla Kim Il Sung, who became the first premier of the DPRK.