Early wars
My guide told me –
•
In 612 the Chinese invaded North Korea with 3 million army which stretched to 400 km as
they marched. The Koreans fought and killed half of them and the rest retreated. (The
Goguryeo – Sui war was a series of invasions into Goguryeo, of the three kingdoms of
Korea between 598 and 614 AD. I can find no mention anywhere of 3 million troops)
•
In 645 another invasion by 1 million Chinese but the Koreans killed all but 217 of them.
(The Goguryeo–Tang War occurred from 645 to 668 and was fought between the
Goguryeo Kingdom and the Tang Empire. I can’t find any mention of the 1 million Chinese.)
•
In 668, the Koreans won. (My research says that in 668, exhausted from numerous
military attacks and suffering from internal political chaos, the kingdom of Goguryeo and
the remnants of Baekje army succumbed to the numerically superior armies of the Tang
Dynasty and Silla, one of the three kingdoms of Korea.)
•
The Great Wall of China was built to keep out the Koreans.
•
In 1388 Korea attempted to invade China to retake what the Chinese had taken from
them. 53,000 troops were led by Yi Seong-Gye. However, he returned to take power from
the King and he overthrew the Goryeo Dynasty. He told the king he was returning
because:
- Korea was a small country invading a much larger country.
- with no troops in the country, Japan could attack from the south.
- It was the rainy season and the weapons were not effective with the arrows going
rusty.
- the soldiers were suffering with sickness.
Korean War
My guides told me that the Americans had invaded North Korea with considerable force in
1950 and that’s what started the Korean war. There are many well documented accounts of
the Korean war that dispute North Korea’s view:
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean
People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to
the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War.
By July, the United Nations with the United States as the principle participant, entered the war
to support South Korea. After some early back-and-forth across the 38th parallel, the fighting
stalled and casualties mounted with nothing to show for them. Meanwhile, American officials
tried hard to create some sort of armistice with the North Koreans as, the alternative, they
feared, would be a wider war with Russia and China, or even, as some warned, World War III.
Finally, in July 1953, the Korean War came to an end. In all, about 5 million soldiers and
civilians lost their lives during the war. The Korean peninsula is still divided today.
Negotiations in 1954 produced no further agreement, and the front line has been accepted
ever since as the de facto boundary between North and South Korea.
Great Wall of China
I was told that the Great Wall of China was built to keep out the Koreans following the early
wars.
According to other sources:
The history of the Great Wall of China began when fortifications built by various states during
the Spring and Autumn (771–476 BC) and Warring States periods (475–221 BC) were
connected by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, to protect his newly founded Qin
dynasty (221–206 BC) against incursions by nomads from Inner Asia.
The Eurasian nomads were a large group of nomadic peoples from the Eurasian Steppe, who
often appear in history as invaders of Europe, the Middle East and China. The generic title
encompasses the varied ethnic groups who have at times inhabited the steppes of Central
Asia, Mongolia, and what is now Russia.
The Great Wall of China visible today largely dates from the Ming dynasty, as they rebuilt
much of the wall in stone and brick, often extending its line through challenging terrain.
History
This is the history of Korea as far as I
can establish
First Kingdom
c. 7thC BC
Three Kingdoms:
Gorguyeo, Baekie, Silla
18 BC
North-South Kingdoms:
Later Silla, Balhae
698
Goryeo dynasty
918
Joseon dynasty
1392
Korean empire
1897
Japanese Occupation
29/08/1910
Declaration of Independence
01/03/1919
Provisional Government
11/04/1919
Liberation from Japan
15/08/1945
Foundation of DPRK
09/09/1948
Kim Il-Sung
1948-1994
Korean War
1950-1953
Chinese withdrawal
01/10/1958
Current constitution
27/12/1972
Admitted to the United Nations 17/09/1991
The Famine
1994-1998
Kim Jong-Il
1994-2011
Kim Jong Un
2011 -
The Famine
(known as the Arduous March)
In the 1990s, a devastating famine
struck North Korea. According to
the government it was a result of a
series of droughts and floods and
the collapse of the Soviet Union
which reduced the supply of food.
However, International sources
quote economic mismanagement
and the loss of Soviet support as
the cause of the food decline.
Estimates of the death toll vary
widely. Out of a population of
approx. 22 million, between
240,000 and 3.5 million died from
starvation or hunger-related
illnesses.
Domestic agriculture has improved
significantly but agricultural
scientists believe that the country is
still unable to feed all of its
population. According to a 2017
report by the Food and Agricultural
Organization of the United Nations
(FAO), two out of every five North
Koreans are undernourished. (I
can’t say that I saw any sign of this.)
Around 30 percent of the country's
food comes from external sources.
Foreign aid provides a good portion
of that but funding for aid programs
has been getting scarce. I have read
in some articles that North Koreans
go hungry because their
government wants them to as a
method of control over the people.
I have read that he term "Arduous
March", or "The March of Suffering"
became a metaphor for the famine
following a state propaganda
campaign in 1993. The official
‘government’ newspaper, Rodong
Sinmun urged the North Korean
citizens to remember the (doublful)
fable from Kim Il Sung’s time as a
commander of a small group of anti-
Japanese guerrilla fighters.
As part of this state campaign, uses of
words such as 'famine' and 'hunger'
were banned because they implied
government failure. Citizens who said
deaths were due to the famine could
be in serious trouble with the
authorities.
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