Internal Assessment: Korea

[uchow10]

Hello everyone,

My history internal assessment is due soon and I just want to ask what others think of my topic. My question that I am doing is "To what extent, did the Korean War Armistice influenced the emergence of the two distinctive sides of Korea (South and North)?"

So what do you guys think? Good topic? Also any suggestions of reference/points to look into?

Thanks

[Ruan Chun Xian]

I'm not sure how much stuff you're going to have to talk about in this topic. Korea was already divided before the war and the war only confirmed its division with little hope for reunification. The armistice happened when it did (1951 - and it took like 2 years to negotiate) because they were basically fighting almost a stalemate. They were just driving each other back and forth over the 38th parallel. At the end of the war, South Korea only gained like the smallest fraction of land that they didn't have before the war.

I think your question is a bit of a case of proving the obvious. I'll tell you why: they had the armistice to stop fighting. If they could fight so that Korea could be united one way or another, they wouldn't need to spend 2 years of peace negotiation while countless people were being killed. They had a negotiation because neither side could win and their only hope was to try and coerce either side into the smaller side of the deal. In the end they basically came back to where they started. So it wasn't really the armistice that caused the emergernce of 2 Koreas, it was the war.

But if you're going to make this point in your IA, then you would (or should) be focusing more on the war as a cause for the permanent split of 2 Koreas, thus you will be neglecting the armistice which should be the focus of your investigation.

So you can do a topic similar to this, however I suggest you reword your title.

I suggest:

To what extent was the Korean War (1950-53) a major reason for the permanent split of North and South Korea? (the permanent bit is important because they were already split before the war, but hoped for reunification. After the war, the split was final). With this title you can talk about not only the war (reasons for the war - mainly the USA fearing Stalin would take over the whole of Korea, which was why it was divided in the first place), but also the leaders of both sides, their allies etc.

However from this topic, I have in mind a, I think, more interesting topic. you don't have to do this, I'm just throwing it out as an idea:

How influential was the Korean War's role in the creation of the two camps - Communist East and Democratic West - of the Cold War? or something to that effect.

In this you can talk about the Korean War as a first direct, hot-war fighting confrontation between the 2 camps. It was also the first Cold War confrontation outside of Europe. It was definitely a war of containment.

Of course this topic is not an invitation for you to talk about all the causes of the Cold War. You will have to focus on the Korean War, and why, unlike the Berlin Crisis of 1948, it broke into a hot war (actual fighting) while there was no fighting in Berlin.