NEA.4+Identify+when+North+Korea,+South+Korea,+and+Mongolia+became+independent+countries+and+describe+how+independence+was+achieved.+(G,+H)

//Focus Question: When did North Korea, South Korea, and Mongolia become independent countries and how was independence was achieved?//
Map of Asia, including North and South Korea, Mongolia, and China: (source: CIA web site)

//**North Korea**//

//**South Korea**//

North Korea and South Korea are, technically, still at war. The Korean war has been in a truce since 1953. Effectively, however, the two are separate states, with a democracy in the south and a growing economy, and a dictatorship in the north that leaves many North Korean people in poverty and isolation.

Japan invaded Korea and occupied it until the end of World War II (1945) when it was split up by the victors. North of the 38th parallel went to Soviet control, and became North Korea. South Korea went under the control of the United States. In 1950, North Korea (later with the help of the Chinese) invaded South Korea in an effort to take over the whole peninsula and reunite the country. The United Nations sent troops, led by the U.S., to repel the invasion; the Korean War was fought from 1950 to 1953, until a cease-fire was agreed on.

//** Mongolia **// Mongolia became independent in 1911. Given its location surrounded by both Russia and China, Mongolia is an amalgam of those countries' two cultures and governments; its history intertwined with theirs.

Mongolia was part of China after the Chinese defeated the Mongols in the 1600s up until 1911. Independence came during the Chinese revolution, when China was in chaos. A few years later, China tried to seize control of Mongolia again, but then the Russian revolution created the Soviet government, which protected Mongolia from the Chinese in the early 1920s. Mongolia remains culturally Asian and Chinese, and governmentally Russian and Soviet (even though the Soviet Union is defunct).

//** sources **//

//country information, maps, and flags// //[|https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ks.html//]//

//maps (public source)// // [|http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps //

__ Books __ Oxford Atlas of the World, Twelfth Edition, 2005; Oxford University Press, New York.

De Blij, H.J.; Peter O. Muller; Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts (Seventh Ed.), John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994 //