The 38th Parellel

The division of Korea along the 38th Parallel at the end of World War II set the stage for one of the earliest and deadliest conflicts of the Cold War. In June 1950, North Korean forces (with covert Soviet backing) launched a sudden invasion of South Korea, aiming to reunify the peninsula by force. The United Nations, led by the United States, rushed to intervene in defense of South Korea, while later that year hundreds of thousands of Chinese “volunteer” troops crossed the Yalu River to aid the North – turning the Korean War into a brutal international showdown. For three years the fighting raged up and down the peninsula, leveling cities and seesawing the front lines; by the time the armistice was signed in 1953, an estimated 5 million people had been killed, over half of them Korean civilians (roughly 10% of Korea’s pre-war population) . The war ended in a stalemate near the original dividing line, and to this day North and South Korea remain technically at war, separated by a tense Demilitarized Zone around the 38th Parallel. In revisiting this conflict, DISEC delegates face questions of collective security and conflict resolution at the height of superpower rivalry: How did the UN respond to aggression and could peace have been achieved sooner? What lessons does the “Forgotten War” hold for preventing proxy wars and protecting civilians? Ultimately, examining the Korean War is a sober reminder of how regional disputes can explode into global crises – and why diplomatic solutions are so crucial to break the cycle of endless armistice without peace.