Korean War DocumentOn June 25, 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea. South Korea was unprepared. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Many South Koreans stayed to fight, but many fled. In the first week, 44,000 South Koreans were killed, just under half of their military forces. On June 27, American President Harry S. Truman ordered American troops to defend South Korea two days after North Korea invaded. By the 28th, US bombers and fighters departed for the Korean Peninsula. This began one of the bloodiest and most infamous wars in US history. On the South Korean side there was the United States with the United Nations and on the North Korean side there were the Chinese and the Soviets. Chinese and Soviet involvement is what made the war violent. Before World War II, Japan ruled Korea as a single country from 1939 to 1945. After World War II, Korea was divided into two countries. The United States sided with South Korea, ruled by Syngman Rhee. Syngman Rhee lived from March 26, 1875 to July 19, 1965. He had a traditional Confucian education, then went to Methodist school where he learned English. He became a nationalist and then a Christian. When he was 21 he joined a group whose goal was to liberate Korea from Japan. The club was destroyed and he was arrested from 1898 to 1904. He earned a PhD from Princeton, becoming the first Korean to earn a doctorate from an American university. He returned to Korea after it was annexed by Japan. He was elected president of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai where he lived for a year and then returned to Hawaii where he had been living, trying to create an international movement for his country. He remained president for 20 years before being put on the map and receiving help from over a dozen different nations, but the Soviets still held out well. If the Soviets had not entered the war, the United Nations could have easily defeated North Korea. The Soviets and Chinese were the reason the Korean War was so historic. The Korean War was a war that shaped the way people live today. Due to Soviet and Chinese involvement, there are people starving to death in North Korea under the communist regime. In the 1990s, 2.5 million people died of malnutrition in North Korea due to the communist regime. Perhaps if the United Nations had won the war and made Korea a constitutional democracy, Korea would be a prosperous country. But because of the Soviets and the Chinese the country was divided in half. The well-trained and ruthless Chinese soldiers, council and Soviet Air Force were what made the Korean War a war to remember..