Korean War in the context of "William Kelly Harrison Jr."

Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is both the capital and largest city of South Korea, and the largest city in the whole of Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's sixth largest metropolitan economy in 2022, behind New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Paris, and London, and hosts more than half of South Korea's population. Although Seoul's population peaked at over 10 million, it has gradually decreased since 2014, standing at about 9.6 million residents as of 2024. Seoul is the seat of the South Korean government.

Seoul's history traces back to 18 BC when it was founded by the people of Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. During the Joseon dynasty, Seoul was officially designated as the capital, surrounded by the Fortress Wall of Seoul. In the early 20th century, Seoul was occupied by the Empire of Japan, temporarily renamed "Keijō" ("Gyeongseong" in Korean). The Korean War brought fierce battles, with Seoul changing hands four times and leaving the city mostly in ruins. Nevertheless, the city has since undergone significant reconstruction and rapid urbanization.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the UN system and is the primary organ charged with ensuring international peace and security. Its powers as outlined in the UN Charter include authorizing military action, establishing peacekeeping operations, recommending the admission of new members to the UN General Assembly, approving any changes to the Charter, and enacting international sanctions. Chapter VII of the UN Charter gives the Security Council the power to identify threats to international peace and security and to authorize responses, including the use of force. Security Council resolutions adopted under Chapter VII are binding on UN members and are therefore a source of international law. The Security Council is the only UN body with the authority to issue resolutions that are binding on its member states.

Like the United Nations as a whole, the Security Council was created after World War II in 1945 in the hope of preventing future wars and maintaining world peace, as the League of Nations had been formed following World War I. It held its first session on 17 January 1946 but was largely paralyzed in the following decades by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (and their allies). Nevertheless, it authorized military interventions in the Korean War, the Congo Crisis, and peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, West New Guinea, and the Sinai Peninsula. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, UN peacekeeping efforts increased dramatically in scale, with the Security Council authorizing major military and peacekeeping missions in Kuwait, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

After the end of the Second World War in 1945, during which the US and USSR had been allies, the USSR installed satellite governments in its occupied territories in Eastern Europe and North Korea by 1949, resulting in the political division of Europe (and Germany) by an "Iron Curtain". The USSR tested its first nuclear weapon in 1949, four years after their use by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and allied with the People's Republic of China, founded in 1949. The US declared the Truman Doctrine of "containment" of communism in 1947, launched the Marshall Plan in 1948 to assist Western Europe's economic recovery, and founded the NATO military alliance in 1949 (matched by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in 1955). The Berlin Blockade of 1948 to 1949 was an early confrontation, as was the Korean War of 1950 to 1953, which ended in a stalemate.

The division of Korea began at the end of World War II on 2 September 1945, with the establishment of a Soviet occupation zone and a US occupation zone. These zones developed into separate governments, named the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), which fought a war from 1950 to 1953. Since then the division has continued.

By the early 20th century, both countries were one single nation: the Korean Empire. During World War II, the Allied leaders had already been considering the question of Korea's future following Japan's eventual surrender in the war. The leaders reached an understanding that Korea would be removed from Japanese control but would be placed under an international trusteeship until the Koreans would be deemed ready for self-rule. In the last days of the war, the United States proposed dividing the Korean peninsula into two occupation zones (a U.S. and Soviet one) with the 38th parallel as the dividing line. The Soviets accepted their proposal and agreed to divide Korea, which led to the declaration of General Order No. 1.

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu (Amnok) and Tumen rivers, and South Korea to the south at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The country's western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eastern border is defined by the Sea of Japan. North Korea, like South Korea, claims to be the sole legitimate government of the Korean Peninsula and adjacent islands. Pyongyang is the capital and largest city.

The Korean Peninsula was first inhabited as early as the Lower Paleolithic period. Its first kingdom was noted in Chinese records in the early 7th century BCE. Following the unification of the Three Kingdoms of Korea into Silla and Balhae in the late 7th century, Korea was ruled by the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) and the Joseon dynasty (1392–1897). The succeeding Korean Empire (1897–1910) was annexed in 1910 into the Empire of Japan. In 1945, after the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, Korea was divided into two zones along the 38th parallel, with the north occupied by the Soviet Union and the south occupied by the United States. In 1948, separate governments were formed in Korea: the socialist and Soviet-aligned Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north, and the capitalist, Western-aligned Republic of Korea in the south. The North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950 started the Korean War. In 1953, the Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire and established a demilitarized zone (DMZ), but no formal peace treaty has ever been signed. Post-war North Korea benefited greatly from economic aid and expertise provided by other Eastern Bloc countries. However, Kim Il Sung, North Korea's first leader, promoted his personal philosophy of Juche as the state ideology. Pyongyang's international isolation sharply accelerated from the 1980s onwards as the Cold War came to an end. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 then brought about a sharp decline to the North Korean economy. From 1994 to 1998, North Korea suffered a famine with the population continuing to suffer from malnutrition. In 2024, the DPRK formally abandoned efforts to reunify Korea.

Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in Asia in 1945, it has been politically divided at or near the 38th parallel between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK). Both countries proclaimed independence in 1948, and the two countries fought the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. The region is bordered by China to the north and Russia to the northeast, across the Amnok (Yalu) and Duman (Tumen) rivers, and is separated from Japan to the southeast by the Korea Strait.

Known human habitation of the Korean peninsula dates to 40,000 BC. The kingdom of Gojoseon, which according to tradition was founded in 2333 BC, fell to the Han dynasty in 108 BC. It was followed by the Three Kingdoms period, in which Korea was divided into Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. In 668 AD, Silla conquered Baekje and Goguryeo with the aid of the Tang dynasty, forming Unified Silla; Balhae succeeded Goguryeo in the north. In the late 9th century, Unified Silla collapsed into three states, beginning the Later Three Kingdoms period. In 918, Goguryeo was resurrected as Goryeo, which achieved what has been called a "true national unification" by Korean historians, as it unified both the Later Three Kingdoms and the ruling class of Balhae after its fall. Goryeo, whose name developed into the modern exonym "Korea", was highly cultured and saw the invention of the first metal movable type. During the 13th century, Goryeo became a vassal state of the Mongol Empire. Goryeo overthrew Mongol rule before falling to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established the Joseon dynasty in 1392. The first 200 years of Joseon were marked by peace; the Hangul, the Korean alphabet was created and Confucianism became influential. This ended with Japanese and Qing invasions, which brought devastation to Joseon and led to Korean isolationism. After the invasions, an isolated Joseon experienced another nearly 200-year period of peace and prosperity, along with cultural and technological development. In the final years of the 19th century, Japan forced Joseon to open up and Joseon experienced turmoil such as the Kapsin Coup, Donghak Peasant Revolution, and the assassination of Empress Myeongseong. In 1895, Japan defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese War and China lost suzerainty over Korea and Korea was placed under further Japanese influence. In 1897, the centuries old Joseon was replaced by the Korean Empire with the Joseon's last king, Gojong, becoming the Emperor of the Korean Empire. Japan's further victory in the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, expelled Russian influence in Korea and Manchuria. In 1905, the Korean Empire became a protectorate of the Empire of Japan. In 1910, the Empire of Japan officially annexed the Korean peninsula.

Brainwashing is the systematic effort to get someone to adopt a particular deception, loyalty, instruction, or doctrine without their will or awareness. Brainwashing is also a colloquial term that refers in general to psychological techniques that manipulate action or thought against a person's will, desire, or knowledge. It attempts to damage individual or group attitudes, frames of reference, beliefs, values or loyalties by demonstrating that current thinking patterns and attitudes are wrong and need change. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds.

The term "brainwashing" was first used in English by Edward Hunter in 1950 to describe how the Chinese government appeared to make people cooperate with them during the Korean War. Research into the concept also looked at Nazi Germany and present-day North Korea, at some criminal cases in the United States, and at the actions of human traffickers. Scientific and legal debate followed, as well as media attention, about the possibility of brainwashing being a factor when lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was used, or in the induction of people into groups which are considered to be cults.