South Korean Foreign Policy

The division of Korea came about as a result of the power vacuum left when the Japanese colonial government was defeated. The country was divided into two zones to handle the surrender of the Japanese forces but the division became permanent and the two entities which resulted fought a bloody war, in which one side was supported by the Soviet Union and China and the other by a United Nations force in which the United States played the dominant role. The armistice was never converted into a peace treaty; the communist regime in the North and the successive regimes in the South, dominated until recently by the military, have maintained mutual hostility. In her earliest days South Korea was weak economically, suffered from a low degree of international acceptance and was excluded from the United Nations. Her foreign policy was staunchly anti-communist and much effort was put into competitive diplomacy with North Korea in order to win international recognition.1