History of Korea
After the end of WWII in 1945, the Allies divided the country into a northern area (protected by the Soviets) and a southern area protected (primarily by the United States). In 1948, when the powers failed to agree on the formation of a single government, this partition became the modern states of North and South Korea. The peninsula was divided at the 38th Parallel: the "Republic of Korea" was created in the south, with the backing of the US and Western Europe, and the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" in the north, with the backing of the Soviets and the communist People's Republic of China. The new premier of North Korea, Kim il-Sung, launched the Korean War in 1950 in an attempt to reunify the country under Communist rule. After immense material and human destruction, the conflict ended with a cease-fire in 1953. The two nations officially remain at war because a peace treaty was never signed. In 1991, both states were accepted into the United Nations.
Korean War
Postwar recovery was different in the two Koreas. South Korea stagnated in the first postwar decade. In 1953, South Korea and the United States signed a Mutual Defense Treaty. In 1960, the April Revolution occurred and students joined an anti-Syngman Rhee demonstration; 142 were killed by police; in consequence Syngman Rhee resigned and left for exile in the United States. Park Chung-hee's May 16 coup enabled social stability. In the 1960s, prostitution and related services represented 25 percent of South Korean GNP. From 1965 to 1973, South Korea dispatched troops to Vietnam and received $235,560,000 in allowance and military procurement from the United States. GNP increased fivefold during the Vietnam War. South Korea industrialized and modernized. Contemporary North Korea remains underdeveloped. South Korea had one of the world's fastest-growing economies from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. In 1957 South Korea had a lower per capita GDP than Ghana, and by 2010 it was a developed country and ranked thirteenth in the world (Ghana was 86th).