North Korea Rejects Peace Talks With South Korea

The disagreements between South Korea and North Korea dates back to the aftermath of World War II, when the Korean Peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel. The Soviet Union occupied the North while the United States took control of the South, leading to the formation of two separate governments in 1948, a communist regime in North Korea and a democratic government in South Korea.

This ideological division sparked the Korean War in 1950 when North Korea invaded the South. The two Koreas, the United States and China, were the main belligerents in the 1950-53 Korean war which ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty, meaning the two countries remain technically at war and a heavily militarized border, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), now separates them.