"How was the Korean War Significant?"

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"How was the KoreaWar Significant?"  Following World War II both Russiaand the U.S.interested in securing spheres of influence in order to spread their respective ideologies. Already prior to this Koreaand its neighbour Manchuriahad been of great importance to the USSR, and now this interest returned. In August 1945, shortly after Japanhad surrendered to the allies, Russian made an attempt to occupy Korea. The U.S.not wanting to make the same mistake with "appeasement" as they had done with Hitler, moved into southern Koreain order to contain communist spreading. Now, similarly to the situation in Germanyat the time, Koreawas split in two along the 38th parallel. North Korea became Communist and South Korea became anti-Communist and under U.S. control, the scene was set for the first conflict of the Cold War. The Korean War actually broke out on June 25th 1950when North Koreacrossed the 38th parallel invading South Korea. The NKPA (North Korean People's Army) managed to gain quick victories over the South Korea, due to their weaponry and tanks that they had gotten from Russia. Although the U.S.had previously said that they did not consider "South Korea a vital part of [their]
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defense perimeter in Asia", Truman committed U.S.naval and Air support to South Korea. Although Koreawas clearly not a strategically important to the U.S. it was probably the tense political situation at this point in the Cold War that got the U.S. to intervene. In April Truman had also just approved of document NSC-68, which said that the U.S.S.R. had a plan "to conquer the world", thus the U.S.felt it had to oppose this communist threat. So, on September 15th after approval of the NSC-81/1 and with U.S.and R.O.K. (RepublicOf Korea) troops pushed back nearly to the end of the Korean ...

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