Leseprobe

1 8 4 K O R E A North Korea is one of history’s most brutal communist dictatorships and, along with China, Cuba and Vietnam, one of the few communist regimes still in existence. Although there are numerous camps, prisons and execution sites in the country, where tens of thousands of people are held prisoner, there are, of course, no memorials there. The memory of the victims is maintained by institutions and memorials in the south of the divided country. Korea came under Japanese rule after the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, after which the country was modernised and the Korean language and culture were suppressed. Especially during the Second World War in which Japan participated as an ally of Germany and Italy, Korean civilians were conscripted as forced labourers and Korean women recruited as slave prostitutes for Japanese soldiers. After the surrender of the Japanese Empire in August 1945, the Japanese troops in Korea were handed over to the Red Army and the US troops along the 38 th parallel north. Until 1947, the two Allies of the Second World War engaged in fruitless negotiations on the future of a united and free Korea. After the negotiations failed, the United States called on the United Nations to secure the withdrawal of all foreign troops from North and South Korea. This troop withdrawal was complete by the end of 1948. After elections supported by the USA in the south and the formation of a Korean government, the Korean People’s Republic was founded in the north as a communist dictatorship with Soviet support on 9 September 1948. In 1950, troops from the communist north invaded the south with In 2011, the Statue of Peace commemorating the so-called "comfort women" was set up in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Border fortifications between North and South Korea