North Korea - US confrontation, the unfinished business of WW2

To many young people today and the uninformed, the root crises of the confrontation between North Korea and the United States government remains a source of mystery. Not many however are aware that the causal belle of the crises dates back to behind the scenes deals the US made with Joseph Stalin of the USSR to enable the Allies gain quick victory over Japan in WW2 and bring the war to a close. As the  Pacific war drew to its climax in February 1945 and President Roosevelt of the USA and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the UK deliberated on how to shorten the Pacific war in the face of the imminent collapse of Germany and the specter of victory in Europe, war weariness had begun to set in in the US and the political leadership wanted to fast track the efforts in the Pacific to bring about quick victory over Japan and bring WW2 to an end in the summer of 1945.  

Haste, impatience and war weariness after four years of fighting the increasingly bitter campaign against Japan led to the fateful decision to invite Joseph Stalin to launch an attack on Japan in Manchuria and Korea to enable the Allies deliver the Coup-De grace that was meant to kick Japan out of the war. Roosevelt and Churchill were already aware of Stalin's designs and efforts to impose communist rule on Eastern Europe as the Red Army spread its presence over those countries. Why it did not occur to the Western Allies that a Red army intervention in the far East paticularly over the Japanese occupied provinces of Manchuria and Korea would leave a lingering crises in the post war settlement in the far East still remains a source of mystery.

The thought that Stalin would hand over the Russian liberated territories to the Western Allies would have been a work of poor judgement. It took strong pressure from the Truman administration to stop the Red army from conquering the whole Korean peninsular and when the Soviets left they left behind a strong communist administration superintended by the Kim family who have remained at the helm of affairs in North Korea till date. The carving out of the US zone of occupation into the present day South Korea was a belated effort by the Truman administration in the aftermath of the war to halt the spread of communism in the war liberated territories in East Asia. That lack of foresight and strategic planning by the US is also the reason China fell under communist rule.

The subsequent effort of the Kim dynasty to conquer the South had to be resisted by force by the US and her allies and it led to the Korean war which has still not resolved the fate of the peninsular till date as neither party is willing to budge even in the face of a nuclear confrontation.  The US inadvertently set the pace for the crises today by virtue of the hasty decision to involve the Soviet Union in the war in the East. The price Stalin demanded is what the US is paying till date, the need to accomodate a communist and nuclear armed North Korea and allow her be. To conquer North Korea would require a continuation of WW2 albeit in the form of WW3  and a willingness by the US to confront both Russia and China major stake holders in the Korean peninsular.
Whether the decision by the Truman administration to invite Russia in to the war in the far east was justifiable is left to this generation of Americans to determine but it would be worth while for President Donald Trump to do a bit of the study of history before coming to any rash conclusion or decision.