the end of WWII. After the war, the USA occupied the south of the peninsula, while the USSR took over the north. Stalin sent Kim II Sung, a young Korean officer from a specially trained unit of the Red Army, to take charge of communizing with the North. When the South declared its independence, the North invaded and the war lasted until 1953. Although sometimes this war is referred to as the 'Forgotten War' because it fell between the global conflagration of WWII and the Vietnam War. By the time the Korean War ended, two million people had died and the North was virtually flattened after almost continual bombing by the US Air Force. The peninsula was officially divided just north of the 38th Parallel, and Kim Il Sung shoved the North down the Soviet-style path, complete with Soviet-style purges, Soviet-style gulags,
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