172. The Birth of North Korea

The podcast explores the Korean War, a conflict often overshadowed by Vietnam in popular memory, despite its significance as a Cold War landmark. It examines Korea's strategic importance as a peninsula dividing China and Japan, its history as the "Hermit Kingdom," and the repressive Japanese colonial rule that crushed Korean nationalism. Paul Thomas Chamberlin, Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, joins the hosts to discuss the division of Korea at the 38th parallel after World War II, a decision made arbitrarily by U.S. officials using a National Geographic map. The discussion highlights the roles of key figures like Syngman Rhee and Kim Il-sung, the simmering violence between Korean factions before 1950, and the impact of China's communist revolution and the Soviet Union's atomic bomb on escalating Cold War tensions.