North Korea and South Korea - Oh what a lovely cold war

Treaties are being strained. Nuclear weapons are being tested. A politician is dead. And the public isn't paying attention. Sounds like the premise of an action film, but unfortunately, it's all too true. Welcome to the dangerous world of North / Sorth Korea...

Obviously, the threat of nuclear warfare isn't the most appealing of topics - plans for summer holiday and cramming for finals are what dominates school conversations. But as we are all citizens of the world, it's our responsibility to pay attention.

We might not have the ability to do anything about the current events, but we should at least be aware.

So here is the dramatic soap opera of North Korea and South Korea in a nutshell - from its ugly beginnings in the last half century to the (literally) explosive events of Summer 2009...

Korea, as most school children should know, was once a unified country. Following the Second World War, Korea was divided along the infamous 38th parallel, with the United States taking control of the southern half and the Soviet Union controlling the north. There was a plan to eventually reunite Korea, but mounting Cold War tensions resulted, instead, in the establishment of two separate governments.

The Korean war, initiated by a 1950 North Korean invasion of South Korea, was in stalemate by 1953. Both the North, backed by China and the Soviet Union, and the South, with the support of the United Nations, had made huge advances, but now both sides were stuck in standstill. An armistice agreement was signed on 27 July, 1953 by the United States and North Korea - South Korea refused to sign.

The armistice created a demilitarized zone around the 38th parallel, called for a complete cease-fire and for the release of all prisoners of war. The papers signed, however, were not peace treaties and so the war technically wasn't over. In 2000, and again in 2007, the South Korean president and the North Korean leader signed a joint declaration calling for international talks to work out a peace treaty to officially end the war.

This led to the Six-Party Talks - a series of meetings from 2003 to 2007 between the People's Republic of China; the Republic of Korea (South Korea); the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea); the United States of America; the Russian Federation; and Japan.

The first round resulted only in the agreement to have more talks. The second resulted in the Chairman's Statement announcing the need of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and the need for the two states to work through crises together. The third meeting reaffirmed the commitment to denuclearization and stressed the specification dates and times for that process.

A snag was hit in the first phase of the fourth round. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with a current 189 countries party to it, has three main points:

• The non-proliferation of nuclear weapons
• The disbarment of existing weapons
• The right to peacefully use nuclear technology

Though North Korea is not signed onto the NPT, it still claimed the right to use peaceful nuclear technology. However, North Korea and the United States could not agree on what 'peaceful' meant.

The second part of the fourth meeting resulted with the United States and South Korea declaring that they had no nuclear weapons on the peninsula, the United States stating that it had no intent to attack North Korea and the North Korea was to abandon all nuclear programs as soon as possible.

No drastic achievements were made between the end of the fourth meeting and the beginning of the second part of the fifth meeting, but drastic events did occur. On the 9th of October, 2006, North Korea announced that it was going to test its first nuclear weapon and would disarm only when there was a world-wide elimination of such weaponry. The UN quickly condemned North Korea and other countries passed trading sanctions. On Hallowe'en of that year, China announced that the talks would continue, but Japan countered, saying that it would not return until North Korea had renounced their weapons. The fifth meeting finally continued in December, with all members reaffirming their positions, some of which had greatly changed. The fifth round was concluded in 2007, with North Korea agreeing to shut down its nuclear facility within 60 days. The deadline wasn't met, but that July, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that the Yongbyon facility was closed.

Meanwhile, debate continued over monetary compensation as well as shipment of aid and resources. A final talk was scheduled to be held before the end of 2007, but like the Korean War peace treaty, has yet to be realized.

North Korea officially pulled out of the six-party talks on 5 April 2009 after international criticism of its satellite launch. North Korea also threatened to conduct a nuclear test as way of protest.

The Korean peninsula was already filled with tension before the declaration of nuclear testing. On 23 May, 2009, the Former President of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, committed suicide by jumping from a thirty-meter cliff. He was undergoing investigations against bribery and scandal at the time and according to the suicide note left on his computer, he was "unable to do anything" and "had made too many people suffer." The current President, Lee Myung-bak, was therefore forced to handle both the national state of mourning and the threat from the North.

North Korea made good on their threat on May 25th. The test was done underground, and resulted in seismic activity felt in Russia, China, Japan and the US. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists concluded that the test was more powerful than one conducted in 2006 and that the bomb had failed to detonate properly, so the potential for damage could be even greater.

These activities caused even more international upset and condemnation. Three days later, North Korea threatened to back out of the armistice agreements and the United States and South Korea raised their surveillance alert to the second-highest level. (The combat alert remains at the second lowest level.) In response, North Korea announced on the following day that it would attack South Korean and American warships off its coast if its sovereignty was threatened.

Now, as I write this, on the 7th of June, the South Korean government has just made public that they have plans of counter-attack should North Korea attack them first.

President Lee issued a statement saying that his country would not back down to the threats and has a strong defense. The United States is also making moves. According to Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, the US is looking into putting North Korea back on its terrorism blacklist.

And by the time this article goes live, there could very well be more to this story.

So there you have it: The drama that's been playing out over the past decades and the shocking plot-twist of the past several weeks.

What I find even more shocking, however, was just how few of my classmates were even aware of this.

As I stated earlier, we might not have the ability to do anything about some current events, but we should at least be aware. There's more to the world than final exams.

Mookychick loves Politics:

• Introduction to politcs
• Politics and the class system
• What left wing and right wing mean
• How the vote came about and why you should maintain the tradition
• The (interesting) history of parliament
• How not to vote
• How to go on a protest march
• How to stay safe on a protest march
• Queer Mutiny - a new queer movement
• Restorative justice
• Ann Coulter - Femine, Famous and Fascist
• No to Proposition 8

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