North Korea

An ancient Korean heritage severed by colonization and Cold War division, forged into a self-isolating state under three generations of a single ruling family.

North Korea shares the deep history of the Korean peninsula, from the legendary kingdom of Gojoseon and the Three Kingdoms to the long Goryeo and Joseon dynasties, a past common to both Koreas. After thirty-five years of Japanese colonial rule, Japan's defeat in 1945 left the peninsula divided along the 38th parallel into Soviet and American occupation zones. In the north the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed on 9 September 1948 under Kim Il Sung, and in 1950 the Korean War broke out, ending in 1953 in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. The state Kim built around the ideology of Juche and a command economy passed dynastically to his son Kim Jong Il and grandson Kim Jong Un, endured a devastating famine in the 1990s, and developed nuclear weapons while remaining one of the world's most closed countries into the present.