War in Defense of the Status Quo

The ironic thing about the Korean War is that it was begun (by North Korea) in an attempt to change a status quo that no party involved was particularly satisfied with, in search of an end result that all parties agreed would be ideal (the unification of Korea), and millions of deaths later ended by reestablishing the same static situation it had originate to eliminate. The war was begun, modern perspective tells the historian, because North Korea desperately wanted to reunite the nation under a single "people's government." The irony of the situation is that South Korea also wanted to unite the nation under a single "government of the people" -- the only difference was the question of which regime supported by which superpower should rule the people. North Korea very nearly managed to unite the nation under communist rule within a matter...
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