Korean and Vietnam War
KOREA, like Germany, had been jointly occupied by Soviet and American forces at the end of World War II. The nation had been part of the Japanese empire since 1910, and when Japanese resistance suddenly collapsed in the summer of 1945, the Red Army, which had been planning to invade Manchuria, found the way open into northern Korea as well. The way was also open, in southern Korea, for some of the American troops whose original mission had been to invade the Japanese home islands. The peninsula was occupied, therefore, more by accident than by design: that probably accounts for the fact that Moscow and Washington were able to agree without difficulty that the 38th parallel, which split the peninsula in half, would serve as a line of demarcation pending the creation of a single Korean government and the subsequent withdrawal of occupation forces.