The north was more heavily industrialized, thanks to the former imperial colonial overlord the Japanese, while the south had more people, and was primarily agrarian. (The north also had more natural resources...)
The Peninsula had come to be divided in the aftermath of WWII, when the Russians had rushed to declare war on Japan in the brief interval between the US of A vaporizing a couple of Nipponese cities and the Japanese Emperor being able to get it through the Japanese military's collective head that It Was All Over.
So the Russkys entered the Korean Peninsula from the north to disarm the Japanese, and the USA entered from the south, ditto, and when it was all over, the Russians, in a move that must have seemed eerily familiar ten years or so later--and which explains subsequent US actions in Indochina--declined to abide by agreements vis a vis democratic elections, and set up Captain Kim Il Sung, Red Army, veteran of Stalingrad, as Great Leader, after changing his name to that of a popular anti-Japanese partisan leader.
The US then set up a real anti-Japanese leader, Lee Sung Man (or Syngman Rhee, as he was known to the west) as democratically elected leader in the south. The US left advisers in the south to help build up it's military; they, based on experience in WWII, convinced the south that the land was too mountainous for armored warfare, and so left the Republic of Korea's military no tanks, and no anti-tanks weapons.
So, when Kim Il Sung's minions came rolling across the38th Parallel--chosen as the demarcation line because it was the halfway point north-south--the south had nothing to counter with but exceedingly brave men with bundles of dynamite.
All too soon they ran out of exceedingly brave men. (Or exceedingly foolish ones. A matter of perspective, I suppose...)
***
The US Army had been eviscerated by a parsimonious congress after WWII, such that heavy and communications equipment had not been operated for a year or more, and regiments that had three maneuver battalions on the books only manned two, battalions had two rather than three line companies, and so forth. To make up a force to "hold the line", US Army units still on Occupation Duty in Japan were gutted to make up full strength ones. The 24th Infantry Division was thrown into action with little idea what was going on; their M24 light reconnaissance tanks ran into Kim Il Sung's T34s outside of Pyongtaek (currently the location of the US Army's largest extant base in Korea, Camp Humphreys, about to be the consolidated location of all or most of US Army Korea) and, predictably, had trouble.Eventually the US Air Force accounted for all of north Korea's tanks, but the confidence of the US Army, which had until recently felt all-powerful after decisive victories in two separate theaters against two major adversaries, had been shaken. Despite any material, technological, or training advantages the US Army had, it would take a year or more before it had really regained it's confidence.
***
I may have had occasion to mention elsewhere in this blog that I spent my twenty-plus Army career as a Korean linguist. I spent 7 full one-year tours in the Republic of Korea, plus a few temporary duties and exercises, for a total of almost nine years spent in-country. While I never went native as so many of my colleagues did, one obviously does not spend 20 years in the US Army if one hates what one is doing. Not to say that I loved every minute of it, but I enjoyed what I was doing. I never identified personally with the Korean people, but their country, history, and national character still resonate in my soul, to a certain extent.Until recently, at least, Koreans felt the full tragedy of their history, culminating in the civil war of what they refer to as the "6/20 Incident", in their bones. The government of the Republic of Korea still maintains a "Ministry of Reunification".
It has been common for years for GIs to claim that the primary mission of US Forces Korea "Is to keep the ROKs from going north." Certainly, there is very little we can teach them about warfare anymore, and their industrial state--the expansion of which was encouraged by support they gave us during Viet Nam, just as Japanese economic development was encouraged by supporting us during the Korean War--needs little help from us. There are things we can do that they cannot on their own, however, and having us as a visible means of support is reassuring. (Or so I have been told by senior ROK officers...)
They probably don't have their own nukes for example...
They are also aware that the Republic of Viet Nam was holding it's own against the conventional invasion by the communist north, until the US Congress voted to withhold all aid, including logistics, i.e., we wouldn't even sell them ammunition.
On the other hand, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the South Koreans dispatched experts to Germany to study the reunification process there, and they did not like what they saw. Basically, and considering the much more vast difference in standards of living of East Germans as north Koreans, they reached the conclusion that reunification would be nearly fatal to the Republic of Korea.
(And, yes, by the way, I deliberately do NOT capitalize the "north" in "north Korea." It's not a nation. Uncle Sam says so. I don't always do the things my Uncle says, but on this one I agree.)
Unfortunately, when the famines hit north Korea a few years later, the ROK government realized that it might not have a realistic choice other than to step in and take over. This partially explains, I think, the previous one or two ROK government administrations' patience with the typical north Korean intransigence--better to prop up a nearly failed regime than to get ourselves into really deep kimche by having to go in and take over.
I'm not sure whether the fact that the current government is toeing a harder line with the commies is a sign of impatience, or that they feel that The End Is Nigh and they might as well hurry things along, or what.
I note that I haven't even gotten into anything at all about the Cult of Kim Il Sung, the oddity of a Communist Dynasty, or... Well, a lot. Guess I'll have to start making notes about What To Write About Korea.
In the meantime, here is my favorite image of the Korean War Memorial in Washington DC:
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