Korea and the 38th parallel
In June 1950 a war broke out on a peninsula in East Asia. It became the first real test of the United Nations once the Cold War had set in. Five years earlier the UN had been created to stop aggression through collective security, where member states act together against any country that breaks the peace. Korea showed what that idea looked like when the world's two superpowers stood on opposite sides.
The line that matters most in the story is the 38th parallel. Korea was split along it in 1945, the war started when North Korean forces crossed it in 1950, and when the fighting stopped in 1953 the country was still divided close to the same line.
A line of latitude in the northern hemisphere that cut Korea into a northern and a southern half after the Second World War. It was the boundary between North and South before the Korean War.
The key question is whether the UN's response to Korea was collective security doing its job, or whether the UN was being used as a tool of US policy.
8 more sections in this topic
Pick this up in your Library: it holds the whole topic, notes, cheatsheet and questions.