The Republic of Korea (Daehan Minguk – 대한민국)

Head of State - POTROK: President Na Tae-suk

Head of Government - PMOTROK*: Prime Minister Kwang Won-ha

* (PMOTROK is Deputy Head of Government - POTROK is the Formal Head of Government) *

History of Korea since 2020:

The Road to War

The economic boom in South Korea had catapulted the country to the world stage by the 2000s. As one of the “Four Asian Tigers”, South Korean companies sold products all over the world. Hyundai cars were common in international streets and Samsung electronics were ubiquitous all over the world. South Korea was guilty of its fair share of contribution to climate change: as of 2021, it was the ninth-largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world. While South Korean climate activists and government recognized this and set the country on a successful path to 100% clean energy generation by 2035, it had done its harm to the Earth as a whole.

South Korea continued its path upwards, the urbanization if its cities growing exponentially. Rapid technological and industrial advancements in South Korea were exported across the world. South Korean scientists and engineers worked tirelessly to create new technologies that adapted them to climate change. The 2020s were also marked by internal challenges as society changed and adapted to global norms. South Korean citizens found themselves discussing long-controversial topics in their country like LGBT recognition, abortion rights, chaebol workplace culture, sexual harassment, and similar social issues. Korean youths, now supplanting their elders in society and government, changed the country in ways that seemed alien to the conservative dictatorship of merely forty years prior.

In North Korea, a different picture emerged. Years of stagnation had crippled the hermit kingdom and the changing environmental conditions worsened the internal struggles. Unreported to the world at the time, North Korea had been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their refusal to accept outside assistance led to countless deaths as its inadequate medical facilities could never hope to stem the flow of new infections. Food insecurity worsened with the contraction of the North Korean economy and by 2022, the DPRK showed signs of famine not seen since the 1990s. Their refusal to accept international aid worsened the crisis.

The antagonistic missile tests and rhetoric continued, showcasing a “business as usual” approach to foreign policy from the North Koreans. But as the South Koreans picked up more defectors from across the Military Demarcation Line, their stories betrayed a deeply troubled country kept in line by an increasingly violent government. In 2026 and again in 2028, the South Koreans attempted to bring the Kim dynasty to the table for negotiations. They feared that an unstable and deteriorated North Korean state could unleash a humanitarian disaster or worse, armed conflict on the peninsula. Eventually, North Korea stopped responding to routine diplomatic calls. Even China, the North’s strongest ally, couldn’t bring Kim Jong-un to talks.

ROK and American intelligence saw the buildup of North Korean KPA forces in 2029. Consistent drought in the region had caused crop failures for three years: for North Korea, it was the final straw. Kim Jong-un was left with no opportunity but to wage war on the peninsula or fall to a rebellion amongst his own people. Battle positions were manned and formations were maneuvered in ways inconsistent with the usual military drills. Levels of alert slowly ramped up across the Korean peninsula over the summer. Inconsistent messaging and the dramatic shifting of KPA forces throughout the winter continued to confuse ROK intelligence analysts.

A Second War

The war began in the spring of 2030, as much of a surprise as it could have been for an age of constant drone and satellite surveillance. The withdrawal of three KPA divisions from the Military Demarcation Line a week prior had lured ROK forces into a false sense of security as alert levels dropped slightly. Using this opportunity at midnight on April 20th, 2030, the feared artillery of the KPA emerged from their hiding spots and erupted on the Seoul metropolitan areas. Despite the best effort of ROK and US military forces, the capital region was shattered by the bombardment.

Firing all throughout the day and night for 96 hours until their positions could be eliminated with counterfire, the KPA onslaught reduced large sections of the Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area to rubble. 300,000 South Korean soldiers and civilians were killed. KPA forces, hiding in the elaborate trenches and tunnels across the borders, emerged from nowhere across the border to engage in close combat with the ROK and US Army. Divisions of soldiers fought and died, with KPA troops flooding into Korea’s urban centers to fight a brutal urban war. They began their advance as ROK forces withdrew from the front, destroying and disrupting infrastructure to stop their flow.

The North’s gamble ran into trouble as their military forces became stuck trying to clear obstacles and repair bridges that the South had destroyed in their wake. The natural terrain of Korea’s mountain passes rendered them sitting ducks for ROK and American artillery fire, with brigades of KPA tanks and vehicles combat ineffective in highways of death not seen since the Persian Gulf War. These mechanized forces were dispatched as they withdrew, seeking to avoid the carefully plotted South Korean kill zones. The obsolete North Korean tanks, however, were not the main problem on the ground.

North Korean light infantry had maneuvered through the mountains and entrenched themselves in Seoul’s dense suburbs. For months, South Korean forces fought in vicious hand-to-hand combat in complicated urban areas ranging from subway tunnels to high rises. Tens of thousands more Korean and American troops were killed or wounded as the stubborn North Koreans were rooted out block-by-block from the megacity region. In a culmination of a decade’s worth of warning, new technologies of war were unleashed upon the peninsula: drone swarms, chemical strikes, precision guided munitions, cyber attacks, and hypersonic missiles flew across the peninsula.

Despite the best effort of allied missile defenses, cities as far south as Busan and Daegu were struck by ballistic missile attacks. North Korean special forces and infiltrators ambushed logistics convoys and staging areas across the peninsula as the South deployed their own special operators to root out KPA sabotage. Yet through the arrival of American and other contingents of allied NATO and UN troops, the North was dislodged from its positions and forced back towards the 38th parallel. With the initial attack repulsed, the ROK and US were now able to maneuver to counterattack and destroy KPA weapon of mass destruction sites.

The ROK-US alliance gained ground by the fall of 2030 as it became apparent that the KPA was running out food, fuel, and ammunition. While chemical and biological weapons had been used against ROK forces, the Kim regime had thus far abstained from nuclear attacks. While nobody knows for certain, it was widely speculated that Kim Jong-un didn’t want to risk nuclear counterattack and a certain decapitation of the regime. Instead, the KPA fell back to Pyongyang for the final battle. One by one, the KPA nuclear facilities were destroyed or abandoned as military forces were ordered to fall back.

The final battle for Pyongyang was triggered upon ROK-US forces reaching the city’s perimeter by February of 2031. All the KPA’s divisions save two, stranded in the north of the country and harassed by incessant allied airpower, stood in extensively prepared defense positions as thousands of soldiers clashed once again. Every weapon in the North’s arsenal was fired as the desperate defenders fell to superior allied military power. South Korean tanks were in the streets of Pyongyang by March 3rd when the news came through that the Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un had died. Rumors of Kim's suicide or betrayal by other party members could never be substantiated by allied forces.

In any case, the North Korean resistance melted away by the 5t. Many threw down their arms and scattered from the oncoming forces. Those who surrendered were hastily sorted into enemy prisoner of war camps that tried to discern genuine prisoners from KPA special forces waging guerrilla actions. Special forces disappeared into the mountains alongside loyal KPA commanders: some of these conventional units would continue to fight for years after. The special forces, doggedly loyal to the Kim dynasty, sought to undermine the new Korean government. Many of the more hardline elements even refused to believe that Kim Jong-un was dead, instead searching the mountains of North Korea for other party elements to regroup with and restore him to the throne. These elite units and their leaders would be the subject of a manhunt from special-purpose ROK military headhunters for years to follow.

Aftermath

A formal end to the war was not declared until March 17th after the destruction of the last loyalist KPA units in the city who had either not received the news of Kim’s death or chose not to believe it. The Korean flag, the blue and red Taegukgi, was hoisted above the Juche tower. The ROK declared the Korean peninsula reunified on March 18th, with this day becoming a holiday in the years since. But this new phase was anything but cheerful: Korea, both north and south, had been decimated by a year of war that lived up to the predictions that it would be “nasty, brutish, and short.”

The Korean conflict had contributed to a simultaneous international financial depression as a confluence of climate disasters, wars, and energy crises racked the global system. This persisted until the year following the war, when global governments recognized that part of their recovery required aggressively investing to get Korea back up and running. With economists positing that a Korean recovery could help end this depression like the Second World War ended the first, a plan was put into action. A global effort by the warring parties to supply aid to the newly unified Korea was described by contemporary politicians as a “modern Marshall Plan.”

Through international grants and aid money, the Korean government stemmed its bleeding and triaged its most damaged sectors. Korean chaebols, industrial conglomerates, were still under martial law’s jurisdiction and received priority for repairs and manning. Soon enough, these companies started pumping capital and production into an economy, local and global, that sorely needed it. The Korean government’s massive reconstruction program put displaced civilians to work in government programs to rebuild their homes. In the north, a new phase of the conflict had begun as fresh troops rotated in from less-affected provinces in the south were ordered to conduct “stability operations.” This counterinsurgency would continue for the next decade.

By 2033, the Korean government restored its capital to Seoul, relocating it out emergency offices in Busan. Efforts to repair and redevelop the Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area had begun during the war but were in full swing by this period of reconstruction. The Korean conflict, combined with the most recent Arab-Israeli war and other world conflicts, had spurred an appetite for peace and reconstruction in the global community. Historic amounts of international money poured into the Korean peninsula as the world economy recovered its footing by mid-2036, most notably from the United States. Military forces from the US remained in Korea, assisting with stability and security operations. They were instrumental to the initial stabilization of vital life support infrastructure.

Partner forces from across East Asia sent their own troops and civilians to deal with the Korean conflict’s aftermath. In a turning point for Japan-Korea relations, the Japanese military sent noncombat aid to the direct center of Seoul following the bombardment. The heroic exploits of Japanese doctors, search and rescuers, firefighters, explosive-ordnance experts, and others bridged a divide between the two countries and served as a foundation for continued dialogue. Others like the Taiwanese, Indonesians, Singaporeans, and Filipinos also served admirably: the contribution of East and Southeast Asian countries to the Korean conflict further swung opinion in Asia to a hypothesized future regional pact.

Martial law was ended in summer of 2036 when the imminent threat of disruption and collapse had passed. The move was praised by the UN as a new hope for a bright future in the region. Elections were held once again and the military stepped down to civilian authority. Efforts to integrate the former DPRK continued with the utmost priority, but it became obvious that the gulf would take many more years to bridge. To combat this, the ROK government enacted reforms to its conscription law in 2036 that diverted a percentage of draftees to a national service corps working to develop the northern provinces.

At the Yalu River, ROK forces dug in once again as they stared down a formidable Chinese presence to the north. While the Chinese had never interfered in the Korean conflict, the collapse of the Kim regime had worried them deeply. An American ally had now defeated its buffer and positioned forces directly at their land border. This border never would become as militarized and isolated as the MDL of the 38th parallel, but the relationship between Korea and China would become forever irreparable. To their south, sporadic clashes in the rugged badlands of northern Korea continued into the new decade.

Life in 2040 begins to look more normal for the Korean peninsula. The physical scars of war, although still being rehabilitated, are fading. Seoul has returned to its status as an international city of commerce and travel. Ordinary people have returned to ordinary jobs with the demobilization of segments of the ROK military. Asia and the rest of the world, however, are far from predictable. With an ongoing program of development in the north prioritizing money and manpower, the Koreans are now dealing with a world battling climate change and global instability as new conflicts. The Korean tiger, beaten and bruised by brutal war, has reemerged on the world stage.

Current Issues in Korea:

The Korean government’s domestic priorities remain rooted in the rebuilding and reintegration of former North Korea. The remnants of the DPRK’s failed command economy still produce rampant economic and societal instability in northern cities despite the trillions of won invested into repairing and developing infrastructure. While Pyongyang has been successfully integrated into the Korean economy, the ROK struggles to unify the country even almost a decade later. North Koreans, already at a disadvantage from their poor education and economic opportunities, are further discriminated against by southerners. While the government seeks to reintegrate northerners, there is still a clear national bias towards the south.

The conventional forces of the KPA were smashed or routed in the final stages of the war, but remnants of special operations forces and other loyalists to the Kim dynasty wage an insurgency in the rugged mountains of the north. ROK military forces still maintain an armed occupation in the north due while they hunt down and destroy the insurgency. Alarmingly, despite the success of the counter-weapons-of-mass-destruction campaign during the war, not all of these weapons have been accounted for: it is of the utmost importance for Korean military forces to track down these missing weapons before they proliferate elsewhere or are used again.

The wounds of war are still fresh amongst veterans and civilians alike, especially amongst citizens of Seoul. While most of the physical damage in the Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area has been repaired, the Koreans are still dealing with catastrophic losses in both human and economic terms. The war killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions more, many of whom are just now starting to resume normal lives. Korean society must process the national trauma of war and come to terms with its painful consequences on the peninsula.

Internationally, the challenges of an increasingly turbulent Pacific region require the Korean government to work alongside partner nations. While rapprochement with neighbors such as Japan and China has seen some progress, there is still friction when it comes to pursuing increasingly further intricate and tight-knit alliances. Despite this, the benefits to regionalism have become clear to an increasing majority of Korean politicians as international aid and trade are proving instrumental to Korea’s recovery from war. Some nationalist proponents remain, however, convinced that old adversaries are using new tools to take advantage of the Korean people once again.

Territories of Korea: