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1945 CEPrimary source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Liberation Arrives, and So Does the 38th Parallel

Two young American officers pick a line off a National Geographic map, and it splits Korea for good

On the timeline · around 1945 CE · A Divided PeninsulaThe Opening of Korea and Japanese RuleA Divided PeninsulaLiberation Arrives, and So Does the 38th Parallel19251930193519401945195019551960

Quick facts

Dividing line
38th parallel
Year
1945
Soviet-backed leader (north)
Kim Il Sung
US-backed leader (south)
Syngman Rhee

What happened

Japan's surrender in August 1945 ended 35 years of colonial rule and liberated Korea, but the United States and the Soviet Union had already agreed to temporarily divide the peninsula at the 38th parallel to oversee the withdrawal of Japanese forces, the Soviets accepting surrender north of the line and the Americans south of it. What both governments described as a temporary arrangement hardened quickly along Cold War lines: the Soviets backed Kim Il Sung's government in the north, and the United States backed Syngman Rhee's government in the south, and neither superpower would permit unification on terms that threatened its own client state. Washington did not treat Korea as central to its East Asian defensive strategy in the late 1940s, and American forces withdrew from the south, a decision that fed North Korean assumptions about how the United States would respond if the North attacked.

Why it matters

The 38th parallel, drawn as an emergency wartime administrative convenience rather than any natural, ethnic, or historical boundary, calcified within three years into the border between two rival Korean states and remains, after the Korean War, the most heavily fortified border on Earth.

How we know

The decision to divide Korea at the 38th parallel and the diverging American and Soviet occupation policies that followed are documented in U.S. State Department records and reconstructed by the Department of State's own Office of the Historian from the diplomatic correspondence of the period.

Sources

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Liberation Arrives, and So Does the 38th Parallel · History of Korea · SourcedStory