Can't figure out why the US would give N. Korea to the USSR

Well, it didn't happen like you think it did. Its complicated, as history often is, and probably can't be competely explained in the short confines of a single posting.

Virtually every nation on earth was engaged in the most horrific struggle in our specie's history. The roots of WWII weren't just the failure of the Versailles Peace Treaty, or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Events that can be traced back a hundred or more years culmenated in the rise of totalitarian political regimes in Italy, Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union and other countries. A terrible world-wide depression through millions out of work and the existing social structures were not capable of rectifying the stituation.

Hitler's Germany made a secret pact with Stalin's Soviet Union to divide up Poland, and they did that. It was the last straw and it finally resulted in general war being declared across Europe. In Asia, a militaristic Japan was already expanding. Japan had fought to wrest Korea from the grasp of China in the 19th century. Both Russia and Japan coveted Korea, and that was the primary cause of the Russo-Japanese War. Japan attacked China and brutally violated every rule of civilized warfare. The United States protested and sent aid to the Nationalist Chinese (KMT) long before Pearl Harbor. Trade restrictions were levied against Japan, and Japan secretly planned its attack on the United States.

After Pearl Harbor, German declared war on the United States in support of its Axis ally, Japan. It was decided that the United States and its allies, Great Britain, Free France, China, and a smattering of other countries, that the primary first effort would be made in Europe against the combined forces of Germany, Italy and countries they dominated. Germany attacked the Soviet Union before Stalin could double-cross Hitler. That resulted in the Soviet Union joining the Allied forces.

Hitler was forced to fight a war on two fronts. In the East the Nazi war-machine rolled up an impressive string of victories for a while. In the West, Great Britain stood almost alone with only the channel to protect them. The United States was once again the pivital element needed to win. U.S. productivity under the able leadership of General Marshall provided the war materials, ammunition, arms and even the food needed to keep the Soviet Union and Britain in the fight. Hitler focused much of his effort onto the Eastern Front, and Stalin pleaded with the West to open a "Second Front" to divert some of the German forces.

The Allies responded by attacking through North Africa to "blood" the American forces under General Eisenhower. The results were mixed, but in the end German forces under the command of General Rommel were expelled from Africa. Stalin wanted the Second Front to be in Europe, and he demanded more aid. The entire Red Army was engaged against the Germans. In Asia, the Communists under the leadership of Mao were the only effective fighting force on mainland China. The Japanese succesfully invaded and occupied the Phillipine Islands early in 1942, and they held almost all of the islands west of Hawaii, except for Australia and New Zealand. The British and U.S. Navy were greatly over-matched, and it was difficult just to hold on to parts of Indo-China.

There was strong evidence that the Germans were working on an Atomic Bomb, and so the United States and England imbarked upon a secret joint effort to beat the Germans to the punch. The Manhattan Project was one of the world's largest and most complicated projects, and it was shrouded in the greatest secrecy. However, scientists working inside the Manhattan Project betrayed those secrets to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union during the entirety of WWII carried on extensive espionage against the United States and Great Britain, but it seems that Stalin never really understood the importance of the Atomic Bomb before it was used against Japan.

As the war continued in the Atlantic, German U-boats were hunted down and killed with increasing efficiency. That made logistical supply from the United States to Europe and The Soviet Union ever more effective, and the tide began to turn. D-Day was the long sought after "Second Front" that Stalin had demanded. Soviet Forces had already turned from the defensive at Stalingrad, and began pressing its attack against the retreating Nazi forces. Stalin was repeatedly urged to turn some of his forces against Japan, but Stalin resisted and refused to participate in fighting the Japanese until he had secured his goals in the West. Stalin seems to have believed, with some justification, that he could wait until the war was won and then step in and secure the spoils.

In the Pacific, the U.S. Navy had also turned from the defensive to attack using airpower off of aircraft carriers. The day of the Battleships was over. U.S. forces hopped from island to island, moving ever closer to the home islands of Japan. Each island campaign was bloodier than the last as U.S. forces came ever nearer Japan. Japan came under increasing air attack from Okinawa, and U.S. carriers. Tokyo burned, but the Japanese military were resolved to fight to the death.

Germany fell, and Hitler committed suicide beneath the rubble of his Thousand-Year Reich. It had lasted less than twenty years, and was responsible for the institutionalized genocide of whole peoples. FDR died of a stroke, and Harry S. Truman (a failed haberdasher, and WWI artillary officer) became President. Truman first learned of the Manhattan Project after he became President ... Stalin knew about it before Truman did. At Yalta, Truman tried to bridge the gap between Churchill and Stalin, both of whom were already shifting to a Post-War strategy. Truman asked Stalin again to join the fight against Japan, and Stalin agreed, but did little about it. After the Atomic Bomb, Japan surrencered and Stalin was there to claim his reward for joining the fight.

Mao and the CCP had already secured most of Northern China, and were supporters of Korean gurrilla forces in the northern part of the penninsula. The Soviet Union, from its bases at the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway (Port Arthur), moved quickly into the vacumn left by the retreating Japanese. There were virtually no U.S. forces on the Korean Penninsula. Almost U.S. Forces were tied up occupying Japan. Truman wasn't about to let Stalin occupy all of Korea, so he demanded of the United Nations (the Allies of WWII) that the Soviet sphere of influence should not extend south of what is today the DMZ. From the end of WWII until the DPRK attacked south in 1951, almost everyone expected the two Koreas to be reunited by negotiation. U.S. Forces on the ground were surprised at the attack, and driven back to the Pusan Perimeter in short order. Our forces were tiny, poorly equipped, and wholly unable to withstand the attack.

Your question is somehow implying that the USA owned Korea.

If you are referring to the Korean war (June 25, 1950 to cease-fire on July 27, 1953), it was a war between North Korea and South Korea.

Lot's of infos is to be found about that on the web.
You might like starting as an introduction with the Wikipedia article.

Sorry Walter, I didn't mean to sound like the US owned Korea. It's just that most of the references I found said something along the lines of the US asking the Soviet Union if they wanted the north.

And to Asherman, I guess from your POV, the US was claiming its piece before the USSR got the whole thing, instead of the two nations making an agreement first (which was how I thought). That makes more sense.

Thanks to you both.

The United Stantes was not "claiming its piece" of the Korean Penninsula. It was doing its best to prevent the Soviet Union conquering the world, one piece at a time.

At the end of WWII, most of the world was in chaos, and ruins. The war had exhausted whole peoples, and the destruction was so widespread that many believed that full recovery would take a century, or more. The Red Army moved into European countries, set up puppet Communist governments and imposed Stalinist rule everywhere they went. Germany was split up into occupation zones, with the Soviets doing everything in their power to extend their control over the whole. France was ruled by DeGual, who tried to reclaim the French Colonial Empire. Italy was returned to the chaos that existed before the Fascists.

Great Britain was in the midst of a social revolution of its own. The old class structure was very nearly replaced by the socialist-thinking Labor Party. Churchill had to leave office when his Party was rejected at the polls. The Empire was falling apart, with India finally serious bid to eliminate the Raj. mainland China, by 1949 was totally controlled by by the Communist Party. Communist movements tried to come into political power in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and in various SE Asian countries by force, or by the ballet.

All around the world people expected that the struggle between Communism and the largely democratic West would continue to the death. Peoples wanted to be on the winning side, and many believed that the Communists would prevail. The Arab nations, which had largely sided with Germany were offended when the United Nations created Israel in their midst. They swore an eternal war of annhilation and extermination against Israel, and promptly attacked before the new nation hardly existed. The Arab nations largely became clients of the Communists, though they became fabulously wealthy selling oil to the West. For a time it looked as if India would also become a Communist satellite. Everywhere in the world the Communists armed insurrectionary movements and supplies to anyone who asked. As the old colonial countries gained their freedom from Europe, most became either military dictatorships or thinnly disguised Communist governments. This was especially true in Africa and to some extent in South America.

The world was divided, and to many it appeared that the Communists were irresistable. In the West, the United States and Britain formed the foundations and battlements against Communist expansion. Because the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons largely as a result of its espionage in the West, all-out war would almost certainly deteriorate into nuclear exchangeds that would kill millions upon millions and destroy exonomies to the point where recovery would be difficult, if not impossible.

During Truman's administration the NSC became an important part of the U.S. Government. One of its ealiest position papers set out a strategy by which the Cold War would be fought. The United States and its allies would limit and avoid direct confrontations with the Soviet Union. This would reduce the risk of all-out nuclear war. Instead, the West would engage and discourage Communist expansion wherever it occurred, short of direct war. This moved conflict from the principals, to their client states where the risk of escalation was less. Finally, the United States and the West would rely primarily on pitting its strongest asset, its economy, against the Soviet's weakest link ... a failing ecomomy typified by central planning and structured to reduce individual initiative., The Cold War then was fought for amost fifty years using the Balance of Terror to avoid nuclear holocaust.

The DPRK would never have invaded ROk without the backing and approval of Moscow and Peking. The Communists believed that the U.S./U.N. was so tired of the blood-letting and so poorly prepared that victory could be achieved quickly. If they were successful, then all of Northeast Asia, except for Japan, would be Communist and the Americans would be driven back across the Pacific. The Korean War did not end quickly. In fact, it is still going on today while a seemingly endless cease-fire prevents direct conflict. The Communists next did their best to control Southeast Asia, and the French were driven out. Vietnam was a valient effort to prevent a fast, easy and low-cost Communist victory in the area. Korea and Vietnam demonstrated that the West, the United States would not sit idly by while freedom was snuffed out. Threats against Taiwan were blunted by the U.S. Navy, and again that prevented the renewal of a bloody Asian war that would have made Vietnam seem like a bar-room disagreement.

For the United States the cost of the Cold War was often in blood, but always in strictly limited conflicts. The cost of the Cold War to the Communists was to put terrible pressure on their economy. Nixon drove a public between the CCP and the USSR that had already been widening for many years. Reagan's Star Wars Program and the Soviet attempt to subjugate Afghanistan were mortal wounds to the Soviets, and they collapsed in the early part of the 1990's.

The world foolishly believed that a great era of Peace had finally arrived, wrong. Soviet clients, who had earlier been constrained by the Kremlin, were now free to follow their own agendas armed with Cold War surplus weapons. Throughout Southwestern Asia despotes and religious fanatics came to power, and crushed all hopes of middle-eastern peace. If the Soviet Union could not face the West on an open battlefield, the petty tyrannies of Southwest Asia had no hope. Afghanistan and Vietnam covert warfare would become their model strategy. Attacks would be made by organization with no direct known ties to lawful governments. Terorism conducted by "private" "freedom-fighters" would be their watchword. Highjack aircraft and ships for ransom. Murder children to gain publicity.

One should remember that all the strands of contemporary political history are interconnected. Events, even "wars", are only a small part of a much larger picture.

First, the Axis believed that they would and should rule the world. Their vision was of that of the Super Race dominating inferior slaves that might be disposed of at their whim. Next, the Communist Movement had a visioin of world domination by a superior socio-economic system dominated by central planning. In the Communistg world everyone one, except the Party faithful, would be reduced to the lowest common denominator. All loyalties would be to the State, and no one would be allowed to "sabotage" the equality dictated by History. Today, the world is threatened by a relatively small band of religious zealots whose interpretation of the Koran justifies the most dispicable acts of murder and terrorism. Their vision is to convert the world to an ideal that never existed, not even in the 7th and 8th century Islamic World. They deny that women have any rights, and believe that most art should be forbidden as sinful. They believe that God will insure their eventual victory over the decadent humanistic values of the Western world. They say that they are willing to die and go instantly to Paradise, if only they can kill even one infidel (infidel=anyone who has a different interpretation of God's Will from their own). The United States is weak and unwilling to pay the blood price of war is an article of faith with them. They spit upon the idea that one should be generous and merciful to others weaker than themselves.

They are weak, yet think they are strong because their leaders and so many of our countrymen tell them so.

Asherman....Thank You!! I know I didn't ask the question, but damn...you are a joy to read!! I never had a teacher all through school make history as enthralling as you just have in two posts.

Re: Can't figure out why the US would give N. Korea to the U

It's simple in a respect:
The Korean War was ended inconclusively in July 1953.