Aftermath of the Korean War

By the end of World War II, the Soviet Union sought to spread communism to other nations and did so by providing political, logistical, and diplomatic support and assisted in the plans to invade South Korea.

Both suffered major damage to their economies and infrastructure, as a result of bombings, artillery strikes and loss of life, including military personnel and civilians.

In September 1953, the Soviet government agreed to "cancel or postpone repayment for all ... outstanding debts", and promised to grant North Korea one billion rubles in monetary aid, industrial equipment and consumer goods.

China canceled North Korea's war debts, provided 800 million yuan, promised trade cooperation and sent in thousands of troops to rebuild damaged infrastructure.

[2] Contemporary North Korea remains underdeveloped[3] and continues to be a totalitarian dictatorship since the end of the war, with an elaborate cult of personality around the Kim dynasty.

South Korean anti-Americanism after the war was fueled by the presence and behavior of United States Forces Korea military personnel and U.S. support for Park's authoritarian regime, a fact still evident during the country's democratic transition in the 1980s.

[18] A large number of mixed-race "GI babies" (offspring of U.S. and other UN soldiers and Korean women) were filling up the country's orphanages.

[19] The U.S. Immigration Act of 1952 legalized the naturalization of non-Blacks and non-Whites as U.S. citizens and made possible the entry of military spouses and children from South Korea.

Australia gained political and security benefits, the most significant being the signing of the ANZUS Treaty with the United States and New Zealand.

During the Cold War New Delhi became more concerned of India's well-being because of the spread of communism and the constant support of the USSR and China to North Korea.

Among those who thrived not only on orders from the military but also through American industrial experts, including W. Edwards Deming were Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Sumitomo.

They joined with those having fled from Jeju and formed the largest post-World War II Korean population group in Japan.

The commander of the PLA's forces in Korea during the war, marshal Peng Dehuai, was made the government's first minister of defense to implement the changes and reforms such as modernization of weaponry, training and discipline, the rank system, and conscription.

At that time, Manchuria, especially Liaoning – the Chinese province north of the Yalu River – was China's most important industrial center.

In his later years, Mao believed that Joseph Stalin only gained a positive opinion of him after China's entrance into the Korean War.

Inside mainland China, the war improved the long-term prestige of Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Peng Dehuai, allowing the Chinese Communist Party to increase its legitimacy while weakening anti-communist dissent.

These successes were contrasted with China's historical humiliations by Japan and by Western powers over the previous hundred years, highlighting the abilities of the PLA and the Chinese Communist Party.

Truman's decision to send American warships to the Formosa Strait as well as an increase in aid in order to deter the PRC from making any attempt to invade Taiwan, after doing nothing to prevent the Nationalists' mainland defeat in the first place, is evidence of this.

[23]: 311 The anti-communist atmosphere in the West in response to the Korean War contributed to the unwillingness to diplomatically recognize the People's Republic of China until the 1970s.

In that time, the ROC was recognized by the U.S. as the legitimate Chinese government, and that in turn allowed Taiwan to develop politically, militarily, and economically.

The result has been that, today, any effort by the PRC to invade the island, or otherwise coerce the people there into an arrangement of political unity with the communist controlled mainland, would be difficult at best to accomplish, and may be impossible without a great deal of bloodshed.

While economic ties between the PRC and ROC have grown immensely since the 1990s, thus achieving a degree of interdependency that would have been unimaginable even 20 years ago; political diplomacy between the ROC and mainland China remains strained, and successive governments in Taiwan have consistently, if sometimes obliquely, signaled their determination to remain independent for the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, relations with communist ally China were seriously and permanently spoiled, leading to the Sino-Soviet split that lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

However, it has been claimed that in fact much of the payment for the Soviet contribution to the war effort was made by China (which perhaps goes some way towards explaining the eventual split between the two countries).

Also, some historians believe, instead of an obvious political disaster, the war actually may have served to preserve the military power of the Soviet Union, while western forces became relatively broken.

It was decided by the Allies at the Second Cairo Conference that maintaining Turkey's neutrality would serve their interests, by blocking the Axis from reaching the strategic oil reserves of the Middle East.

The Turkish Brigade, which operated under the U.S. 25th Infantry Division, assisted in protecting the supply lines of U.N. forces which advanced towards North Korea.

[37] President Truman declared a state of national emergency at the outset of the war in December 1950 during which the penalties under numerous federal statutes were automatically escalated.

President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, calling on the armed forces to provide equal treatment and opportunity for black servicemen.

However, advances in medical services such as the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and the use of rapid transport of the wounded to them such as with helicopters led to a lower death rate for U.N. forces than in previous wars.