The Korean War

In August 1945, with World War II ending, two American colonels faced a map and a 30-minute deadline. They were tasked with dividing the Korean peninsula into temporary occupation zones. Working late in the Pentagon, they used a National Geographic map that lacked any provincial boundaries. They chose the 38th parallel, a simple horizontal line, mainly because it kept the capital, Seoul, in the American zone. The Soviet Union, whose troops were much closer, surprisingly accepted the proposal. This decision, made without consulting any Koreans, ignored a thousand years of unified history. The 'temporary' military boundary immediately severed the industrial North from the agricultural South, causing massive social and economic disruption for millions of people.