Gyeongui Line (1904–1945)
Following Japan's defeat in the Pacific War and the subsequent partition of Korea, the Gyeongui Line was divided at the 38th parallel between North and South Korea. On 25 August 1945, the Soviet Army began operating trains on the line north of Sariwon, whilst trains in the south terminated at Gaeseong. In 1946, the railways in both North and South were nationalised, creating the Korean National Railroad in the South and the Korean State Railway in the North. After the Korean War, the Gyeongui Line was split into three sections. In the South, the Seoul–Jangdan section became the KNR's Gyeongui Line, retaining the same name; in the North, the Bongdong–Pyeongyang section became the P'yŏngbu Line, whilst the Pyeongyang–Sinuiju section became the P'yŏngŭi Line.
Korean nationalist historiography
The surrender of Japan at the end of World War II handed Korea its independence, but the peninsula was immediately divided into ideologically opposed regimes in North and South Korea. At first, Marxist historians focusing on class analysis dominated historical writing in the north, whereas Syngman Rhee's staunchly anti-Communist government (1948–1960) also made the notion of "minjok" less central to historiography in the south. In North Korea class analysis was displaced by nationalist analysis in the 1950s, soon after the Korean War. In South Korea, the fall of the Rhee regime in 1960 and the anti-Japan protests triggered by the normalization of diplomatic ties with Japan in 1965 also reinstated the "minjok" as a "unifying framework" for developing an anti-colonial historiography. Since then, historical studies in both North and South have displayed a "pervasive and intense nationalistic tone" despite ideological differences between the two countries. This shared historical outlook has served as a backdrop to North Korea–South Korea relations, as in June 2000 when both Korean heads of state stated that Korean unification was a historical imperative.