When the Second World War ended with Japan's defeat, all Koreans aspired for a unified independent nation but instead suffered national division resulting from the subsequent Cold War between East and West. The national division and establishment of separate governments in the South and the North eventually led to a civil war, the Korean War (1950-1953). The Korean War was a by-product of internal ideological conflicts and was viewed by many as a proxy war between the West and the Communist bloc.

The Korean War developed into a large-scale international war drawing in 16 UN countries as well as China and the USSR from the Communist bloc. The fighting ended in an armistice, which created a 155-mile truce line dividing the Korean Peninsula.

After the ceasefire, the Cold War confrontation on the Korean Peninsula intensified. The South Korean government pursued a policy toward North Korea aimed at achieving unification by defeating Communism. At the same time, North Korea declared a strategy of a "revolutionary stronghold" and attempted to communize the South as well.


From the beginning of the 1970s, Cold War tensions began to ease, with capitalist and communist countries seeking détente. Against this backdrop, Seoul and Pyongyang simultaneously announced the South-North Joint Communiqué of July 4, 1972 and initiated dialogue and exchanges on a limited scale, including the South-North Red Cross Talks and South-North Coordinating Committee Meetings. Nevertheless, it proved to be impossible to relieve the animosity and mistrust between the South and North or build mutual confidence in the political arena.

In 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan, which drove the world back to a new Cold War confrontation and turned inter-Korean relations sour. By the mid 1980s, reforms and openness in the USSR triggered an acceleration of reforms and opening in East European Communist countries. As the Cold War began to be dismantled, inter-Korean relations reached an important turning point.

On July 7, 1988, in response to the easing of the Cold War internationally, the South Korean government announced the Special Declaration in the Interest of National Self-Esteem, Unification and Prosperity. By 1990, inter-Korean relations had improved dramatically with the beginning of South-North High-Level Talks between the prime ministers.

At the fifth round of the High-Level Talks in 1991, the two prime ministers signed the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression and Exchanges and Cooperation between the South and the North, also known as the Basic Agreement. It marked one step forward toward peace and unification on the Korean Peninsula.

Due to serious economic difficulties in North Korea, however, outsiders expected the regime to collapse. Furthermore, suspicions were raised about whether North Korea had developed nuclear weapons when it withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in March 1993. Due to these developments, tension on the Korean Peninsula heightened in the mid-1990s.

The issue of a North Korean nuclear program caused inter-Korean relations to be nearly severed, and they only began to gradually improve as the Kim Dae-jung Administration (1998-2003) carried out a policy of reconciliation and cooperation, dubbed the Sunshine Policy. These efforts culminated in the first inter-Korean summit, which was held in Pyongyang in June 2000 and resulted in the June 15 South-North Joint Declaration.

The inter-Korean summit served as a watershed in inter-Korean relations, turning five decade of confrontation and hostility into ties of reconciliation and cooperation. Since June 2000, much progress has been made in inter-Korean relations.

Dialogue has opened in various areas and exchanges of separated relatives have commenced. In addition, there has been an increase in inter-Korean exchanges of personnel and goods.

North Korea¡¯s test firing of nuclear missiles in October 2006 disrupted this reconciliatory mood and raised tensions again on the Korean Peninsula. However, the South Korean Government is seeking a peaceful resolution with the international community on the North Korean nuclear issue through dialogue.