How did North and South Korea come to be separated in the first place?
The Korean War in the early 1950s. The North Korea, which was allied with fellow Communist nations China and the Soviet Union, invaded the US-backed South Korea to conquer and unify the peninsula. When war happened, the United Nations countries joined the U.S. and South Korea to repel the invasion, and the war went on. President Eisenhower eventually got an armistice which was basically a truce between the North and the South. Technically, that means the Korean War is officially still going on. But a part of that truce divided North Korea and South Korea along the 38th Parallel on the world map. The border between North and South is called the Demilitarized Zone, or the DMZ, and is one of the most militarily dangerous areas in the world today.
