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Head to History Extra.com. discover history extra Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, Fascinating Historical Conversations from the

makers of BBC History magazine. On today's Everything You Wanted to Know episode, we're covering the Korean War,

exploring how Korea came to be divided into two nations,

what the impact of fighting was on the peninsula's civilian population

and how close the clash came to going nuclear.

In conversation with Spencer Mizin,

Owen Miller of the center of Korean Studies at Soas answers your questions on

this Cold War conflict.

I thought I'd start with a question that's been submitted on social media by insignificant matters and that is what was the

Korean War I wonder if you could just spend a few minutes introducing us to it, maybe talking us through the

landmark moments in the conflict.

Okay, so yeah, this is a big question to talk about the whole war that lasted for three years and of course it had a big prehistory as well and a big aftermath, but let's try and do this.

So, I mean, the war was primarily, you you know at the beginning a war between the two halves of

Korea that had been partitioned we can talk about that a bit more a bit later I think the partition

but it was a war then to reunify the two halves of

Korea bear in mind the war began in June 1950 but the two Korean states had only

actually been founded a couple of years before in August and

September 1948. So there hadn't been around long. This was a new partition and it was the northern side led by Kim Il Song which initiated the war in order to reunify the country under his rule, under the rule of Kimil Song. The state was called the DPRK, the Democratic People's

Republic of Korea. Kimil-Song had decided on this course already in 1949. He then worked on persuading his sort of main backer

Stalin the rule of the Soviet Union as well as Maletong the leader of the newly formed People's Republic of China, he worked on persuading

...