![]() ![]() The bloody but ultimately fruitless war lasted three years-by the end, North Korean forces had been pushed back even further beyond the bounds of the 38th parallel, and the peninsula remained divided. ![]() ![]() In June of 1950, Kim Il-sung, the leader of North Korea, stormed across the border with Soviet tanks and began the Korean War. After the Allies won the war, American forces feared that a power vacuum in the wake of the end of the Japanese occupation would create strife-so they arbitrarily divided the peninsula into two countries along the 38th parallel, offering the northern half to the Soviets and occupying the southern half themselves. Prior to the end of World War II, Korea was one united peninsula, occupied by the Japanese. In Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, American journalist Barbara Demick blends historical context, content from interviews with North Korean defectors, and her own imagination as she recreates the journeys of six refugees who escaped from North Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s.ĭemick begins the book by describing the fraught history of Korea in the 20th century. ![]()
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