The Korean peninsula

Korea was divided in 1945 by the armies that defeated Japan and has been two hostile states since 1948. They fought a war from 1950 to 1953 that killed perhaps three million people and ended in a ceasefire that has never become a peace. The North, a closed state of twenty-six million ruled by one family for three generations, has built nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach America. The South, a rich democracy of fifty-one million, shelters under an American alliance whose president now questions its cost. In 2024 the North formally gave up the goal of reunification and declared the South a foreign enemy state.

Where it stands · September 2026

North Korea commissioned a destroyer it says can carry nuclear weapons on 7 September, during joint United States and South Korea drills. Russia and North Korea opened their first road bridge on 8 September. North Korea fired ballistic missiles into the sea on 20 September and tested a new hypersonic weapon on 22 September. On 29 September South Korea blamed North Korean mines for a blast in the Demilitarized Zone that injured three South Korean soldiers, and on 30 September demanded an apology.

What the dispute is about

The bomb. The North says its nuclear weapons are permanent and not negotiable. The United States, South Korea and the Security Council say they are illegal and must go. No one has a way to make that happen.

The alliance. American troops have been in the South since 1950. For the North they are the threat that justifies the bomb. For the South they are the reason the bomb has not been used.

One Korea or two. For seventy years both states claimed the whole peninsula. The North has now written two states into its constitution. The South's constitution still claims the North.

How each side explains it

Pyongyang's account

American bombers destroyed every town in the North in the 1950s and killed a fifth of its people. America kept nuclear weapons in the South for thirty years, rehearses invasion and the killing of the North's leaders every spring and summer, and tore up the one agreement the two ever signed. Iraq had no bomb and was invaded. Libya gave its programme up and its leader was killed in a ditch. Iran negotiated and was attacked. The lesson is plain, and the North has learned it. Its weapons are the only reason there has been no second Korean war.

In our coverage

North Korea's deterrent and its Russia/China partnerships are legitimate →181 headlines
Covered by:CGTN · China Daily · TASS (EN) · TASS · BelTA Russian · Gazeta.ru

The account of Seoul and Washington

The North began the war of 1950, as Soviet archives confirm, and has since bombed an airliner, sunk a warship, shelled an island and kidnapped foreign citizens. It signed agreements to freeze its programme and enriched uranium in secret. It spends a quarter of its output on arms while its people go hungry, holds tens of thousands in camps, and now sells shells and soldiers to Russia. Deterrence has kept the peace. The door to talks is open and the North has refused to walk through it since 2019.

What each account leaves out

Pyongyang's leaves out that, as Soviet archives show, it began the war whose destruction it cites; that the famine of the 1990s killed hundreds of thousands while it built missiles; and that a United Nations inquiry found crimes against humanity in its prison camps.

Seoul's and Washington's leaves out that the reactors promised in 1994 were never delivered, and that Washington then listed the North in an "axis of evil"; that America walked out of the 2019 summit when a partial deal was on the table; and that the attacks on Iraq, Libya and Iran are the North's argument, and nothing has been offered that answers it.

Beijing's and Moscow's leaves out that both voted for every sanctions resolution until 2017; that China supplies nearly all the North's trade and Russia now its oil, in breach of measures they wrote; and that Russia pays for shells with technology that improves the missiles.

The ledger

North Korea

Wanted: the survival of its system, on its own terms.
Gained: a nuclear force no one will attack, and in Russia and China two patrons at once.
Paid: decades of poverty for its people, who were never asked.

South Korea

Wanted: security, and once unification.
Gained: prosperity behind the alliance.
Paid: permanent exposure to the North's artillery and now its bombs; its own public, by a wide margin, tells pollsters it wants a bomb too.

The United States

Wanted: a North without nuclear weapons.

Words in dispute

Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.

denuclearisation / disarmament of the victim
deterrent / illegal weapons programme
joint exercises / invasion rehearsals
provocation
regime / government
two hostile states
end-of-war declaration