Many Koreans desired reunification when the United States and the Soviet Union divided the peninsula into separate occupation zones in 1945. Both the Republic of Korea's Syngman Rhee and North Korea's Kim Il-sung threatened to use force to restore one Korean nation. Kim acted first and would have succeeded had the United States and its allies not intervened militarily. After the war-induced hardening of the peninsula's division, reunification became an aspiration viewed as impractical, if not impossible, by Washington. Although U.S. policymakers had no objection to reunification in principle--indeed, they would have gladly made it an ancillary benefit of defeating the Democratic People's Republic of Korea--they had little interest in pursuing what they believed would be a wasted effort.
Authors
- Published in
- United States of America
