Leseprobe

K O R E A 1 8 5 the aim of reuniting the country by force of arms and managed to take almost the entire peninsula. After initial support from the people of the South, any sympathy quickly turned into rejection and resistance when the North Korean communists tried to impose their rule in the South with forced collectivisation and by waging terror on the civilian population. In this bloody conflict, which was the first proxy war in the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the USA, South Korean UN troops led by the USA beat back the North Korean troops. In 1953, in the Panmunjom Armistice Agreement, a demarcation line was finally agreed along the 38 th parallel, separating the communist north from the democratically governed south. This demarcation line is one of the most heavily guarded and mined regions in the world. While South Korea has developed into a stable parliamentary democracy since the end of the military dictatorship in 1988, North Korea has become the most isolated country in the world, where massive human rights abuses are a daily occurrence. Mismanagement and natural disasters led to continued famine that claimed thousands of lives. Coupled with an absolute cult of leader­ ship centred around the dynasty of the country’s founding president Kim Il Sung, his family and descendants, all forms of deviant behaviour are severely punished. Time and again, reports of executions in even the closest circle surrounding the current leader Kim Jong Un filter out into the public domain. So far, about 30,000 people have managed to escape from the isolated country to South Korea. The official goal of both states remains the reunification of Korea.