Korea, U.S. Military Involvement in

Korea, U.S. Military Involvement in.
U.S. military involvement began almost from the outset as the United States sought in the mid‐nineteenth century to establish commercial and diplomatic relations with the so‐called “Hermit Kingdom.” After a number of Korean attacks on American merchant ships trying to penetrate the peninsula, a U.S. naval squadron of launched an unsuccessful punitive assault near Seoul (1871). China soon gained control of Korea and opened it to other countries, beginning in 1882 with the United States. In the Sino‐Japanese War (1894–95) and the Russo‐Japanese War (1904–05), Tokyo increasingly took over Korea, which became part of the Japanese empire, 1905–45.

With the defeat of Japan in 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union shared a trusteeship over the Korean peninsula, the Red Army occupying the area north of the 38th parallel and the U.S. Army under Gen. John R. Hodge the South. That division, meant to...

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