At the Cairo Conference of 1943, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek agreed that Japan should lose all territories it had conquered by force. The three powers declared that Korea – forcibly annexed by Japan in 1910 – shall be free and independent “in due course”. But a consensus on Korea’s fate would not be reached even as the end of WWII seemed imminent in August 1945.

On August 10, 1945, the U.S. decided to occupy the southern half of Korea out of fear that the Soviet Union would take control of the entire peninsula. Two American officers – Dean Rusk (Then Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs) and Charles Bonesteel (Then Commander of U.S. Forces in Korea) – were given the task of creating a U.S. occupation zone. They decided on the 38^th Parallel, a latitude line that divided the peninsula approximately and left the capital Seoul to the U.S. Thus, in a proposal opposed by nearly all Koreans, the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to temporarily occupy Korea as a trusteeship.

Throughout their occupation, the U.S. supported Rhee Syngman, an anti-Communist and rightist politician who would become the first president of South Korea. In the north, the Soviet Union backed Kim Il-Sung, a Communist and previous guerilla. The peninsula was officially divided in 1948 for the first time in a millennium.

Bloody fighting along the border escalated to war when North Korea attacked across the 38^th Parallel on June 25, 1950. By July 1951 the war had become a stalemate, and on July 27, 1953 a cease-fire was established following the UN’s acceptance of India’s proposal for an armistice. A 3mile demilitarized zone (DMZ) was formed, which is still defended today by troops on either side.

During the war, Communists consistently conscripted South Korean citizens, and many never returned home. Meanwhile the South Korean military and police executed tens of thousands of accused “Communist sympathizers” without trial. American troops were ordered to consider any Korean civilian on the battlefield approaching their position as hostile because the belief was that Communist infiltrators had blended in with the refugees. As a result, countless defenseless refugees – including women, children, and elderly citizens – were shot by the U.S. Army and strafed by the U.S. Air Force.