The division of Korea began with the 15 August 1945 official announcement of the surrender of Japan, thus ending the Pacific Theater of World War II. During the war, the Allied leaders had already been considering the question of Korea's future following Japan's eventual surrender in the war. The leaders reached an understanding that Korea would be liberated from Japan but would be placed under an international trusteeship until the Koreans would be deemed ready for self-rule. In the last days of the war, the United States proposed dividing the Korean peninsula into two occupation zones with the 38th parallel as the dividing line. The Soviets accepted their proposal and agreed to divide Korea.
The Jeju uprising, known in South Korea as the Jeju April 3 incident, was an uprising on Jeju Island from April 1948 to May 1949. A year prior to its start, residents of Jeju had begun protesting elections scheduled by the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK) to be held in the United States-occupied half of Korea, which they believed would entrench the division of the country. A general strike was later organised by the Workers' Party of South Korea (WPSK) from February to March 1948. The WPSK launched an insurgency in April 1948, attacking police and Northwest Youth League members stationed on Jeju who had been mobilized to suppress the protests by force. The First Republic of Korea under President Syngman Rhee escalated the suppression of the uprising from August 1948, declaring martial law in November and beginning an "eradication campaign" against rebel forces in the rural areas of Jeju in March 1949, defeating them within two months. Many rebel veterans and suspected sympathizers were later killed upon the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, and the existence of the Jeju uprising was officially censored and repressed in South Korea for several decades.
The Chondoist Chongu Party (Korean: 천도교청우당) is a popular front party in North Korea. The party was founded on 8 February 1946 by a group of followers of the Ch'ŏndogyo. The party increasingly came under the influence of the government over time and is a part of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea, a nominal alliance of parties dominated by the ruling Workers' Party of Korea. The founding-leader of the party was Kim Tarhyon.
The first Republic of Korea was the government of South Korea from August 1948 to April 1960. The first republic was founded on 15 August 1948 after the transfer from the United States Army Military Government that governed South Korea since the end of Japanese rule in 1945, becoming the first independent republican government in Korea. Syngman Rhee became the first president of South Korea following the May 1948 general election, and the National Assembly in Seoul promulgated South Korea's first constitution in July, establishing a presidential system of government.
The People's Republic of Korea was a short-lived provisional government that was organized at the time of the surrender of the Empire of Japan at the end of World War II. It was proclaimed on 6 September 1945, as Korea was being divided into two occupation zones, with the Soviet Union occupying the north and the United States occupying the south. Based on a network of people's committees, it presented a program of radical social change.
The United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) was the official ruling body of the Southern half of the Korean Peninsula from 8 September 1945 to 15 August 1948.
Pak Hon-yong was a Korean independence activist, politician, philosopher, communist activist and one of the main leaders of the Korean communist movement during Japan's colonial rule (1910–1945). His nickname was Ijong (이정) and Ichun (이춘), his courtesy name being Togyong (덕영).
The Communist Party of Korea was a communist party in Korea. It was founded during a secret meeting in Seoul in 1925. The Governor-General of Korea had banned communist and socialist parties under the Peace Preservation Law, so the party had to operate in a clandestine manner. The leaders of the party were Kim Yong-bom and Pak Hon-yong.
The Korean National Police Agency (KNPA), also known as the Korean National Police (KNP), is one of the national police organizations in South Korea. It is run under the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and is headquartered in Seodaemun, Seoul. The agency is divided into 18 local police agencies, including the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. Local police agencies are not independent of the national police.
The Gyeongbu high-speed railway, also known as Gyeongbu HSR, is South Korea's first high-speed rail line from Seoul to Busan. KTX high-speed trains operate three sections of the line: on 1 April 2004, the first between a junction near Geumcheon-gu Office station, Seoul and a junction at Daejeonjochajang station north of Daejeon, and a second between a junction at Okcheon station, southeast of Daejeon, and a junction near Jicheon station, north of Daegu entered service; then on 1 November 2010, the third section, between a junction west of Daegu and Busan became operational. The missing gaps across the urban areas of Daejeon and Daegu were in construction for an expected opening in 2014, separate tracks into Seoul Station were also planned. The temporary ends of the three sections were connected to the parallel conventional Gyeongbu Line by tracks that will serve as interconnector branches upon the completion of the entire line. On 1 August 2015, construction on urban areas of Daejeon and Daegu were completed; all the sections of HSR line were connected.
The Communist movement in Korea emerged as a political movement in the early 20th century. Although the movement had a minor role in pre-war politics, the division between the communist North Korea and the anti-communist South Korea came to dominate Korean political life in the post-World War II era. North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, continues to be a Jucheist state under the rule of the Workers' Party of Korea. In South Korea, the National Security Law has been used to criminalize advocacy of communism and groups suspected of alignment with North Korea. Due to the end of economic aid from the Soviet Union after its dissolution in 1991, due to the impractical ideological application of Stalinist policies in North Korea over years of economic slowdown in the 1980s and receding during the 1990s, North Korea continues to nominally uphold Communism, but has replaced Marxism-Leninism with the Juche idea. References to Communism were removed in the North Korean 1992 and 1998 constitutional revisions to make way for the personality cult of Kim's family dictatorship and the North Korean market economy reform. The Workers' Party of Korea under the leadership of Kim Jong Un later reconfirmed commitment to the establishment of a communist society, but orthodox Marxism has since been largely tabled in favor of "Socialism in our style". Officially, the DPRK still retains a command economy with complete state control of industry and agriculture. North Korea maintains collectivized farms and state-funded education and healthcare.
The Yeosu-Suncheon rebellion, also known as the Yeo-Sun incident, was a rebellion that began in October 1948 and mostly ended by November of the same year. However, pockets of resistance lasted through to 1957, almost 10 years later.
The June Democratic Struggle, also known as the June Democracy Movement and the June Uprising, was a nationwide pro-democracy movement in South Korea that generated mass protests from June 10 to 29, 1987. The demonstrations forced the ruling government to hold direct presidential elections and institute other democratic reforms, which led to the establishment of the Sixth Republic, the present-day government of South Korea.
The Autumn Uprising of 1946, also called the 10.1 Daegu Uprising of 1946 was a peasant uprising in South Korea against the policies of the United States Army Military Government in Korea headed by General John R. Hodge and in favor of restoration of power to the people's committees that made up the People's Republic of Korea. The uprising is also sometimes called the Daegu Riot or Daegu Resistance Movement. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea uses a neutral name, the Daegu October Incident.
Communist partisans were active before, during and after the Korean War in South Korea.
Operation Blacklist Forty was the codename for the United States occupation of Korea between 1945 and 1948. Following the end of World War II, U.S. forces landed within the present-day South Korea to accept the surrender of the Japanese, and help create an independent and unified Korean government with the help of the Soviet Union, which occupied the present-day North Korea. However, when this effort proved unsuccessful, the United States and the Soviet Union both established their own friendly governments, resulting in the current division of the Korean Peninsula.
The Busan–Masan Uprising or abbreviated, the Bu-Ma Uprising, was a series of demonstrations and popular uprising against President Park Chung Hee's dictatorial Yushin regime in South Korea. It took place between 16 and 20 October 1979 in Busan and Masan. Students from Pusan National University began demonstrations calling for an end to Park's dictatorship. On 17 October the protests grew to include citizens and spread to Masan on 18 and 19 October. It is also called the Busan–Masan Democratic Uprising or Busan–Masan Democratization Movement.
Yi Sung-yop was a communist activist during the Japanese occupation of Korea and a politician during the early years of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Ho Hon was a Korean independence activist in Japanese controlled Korea and politician in the early years of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. As a lawyer, he defended independence activists along with Lee In and Kim Byong-ro. In September 1948, following the official proclamation on the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the northern part of the Korean peninsula, he was elected a delegate to the first convocation of the Supreme People's Assembly, the unicameral parliament of North Korea. He also served as the President of Kim Il Sung University. While working as a reunification activist, he drowned in the Chongchon River in August 1951. He was also the father of Ho Jong-suk, a female activist and a politician in North Korea.
The North Korean Branch Bureau (NKBB) of the Communist Party of Korea was established by a CPK conference on 13 October 1945, and was through the merger with New People's Party of Korea replaced by the 1st Central Committee of the Workers' Party of North Korea on 30 August 1946. It changed its name to the Communist Party of North Korea (Korean: 북조선공산당) on 10 April 1946 and became independent of the CPK.
