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Launch of a new Korea
Crowds celebrate the inauguration of the First
Republic of Korea at the Government-General
Building in Seoul on 15 August 1948, in front
of new president Syngman Rhee. After the
Second World War, the Korean peninsula
had been divided along the 38th parallel, with
Soviet forces occupying the north and the US
Army governing the south. On 9 September
1948, the communist-ruled Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea was established in
the north, led by Kim Il-sung. Two years later,
the north invaded the south; in 1953, at the end
of a three-year war, the states remained divided.A city at war
A British soldier stands guard between the Arab and Jewish quarters
of Jerusalem during the civil war wracking Palestine in 1947–48. The
conflict had been sparked when Palestinian and Arab groups rejected
a UN proposal to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states;
British forces stationed in the mandated territory were subjected to
violence from both sides during this time. Britain began withdrawing
its troops from Palestine from 1947, finally giving up the mandate on
15 May 1948; the independent state of Israel had been declared under
the leadership of David Ben-Gurion on 14 May. The last British
troops departed the region on 30 June, but by then A rab armies from
Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq had invaded, leading to
many more months of fighting.