The North and The South: Korea Korea had been under the Japanese occupation since 1910 and was therefore part of the Japanese empire. This 35-year-old empire came to an end when the second World War broke and it eventually resulted in the division of Korea into two countries; North Korea, known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with Pyongyang as its capital, and South Korea, the Republic of Korea with Seoul as its capital. Government & Politics: The division essentially occurred because the United States and the Soviet Union occupied different parts of Korea forming a partition line between the regions that were under their control, and negotiations between the two failed to unify Korea. As a result, a socialist...