South Korea’s military said North Korea launched several ballistic missiles from Pyongyang toward its east coast on January 4.
The launch came as South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung begins a state visit to China, where peace on the Korean Peninsula is expected to be discussed. Experts say Lee will urge Chinese President Xi Jinping to help restart dialogue with North Korea, even as Pyongyang has dismissed his outreach.
Despite these peace efforts, on January 3, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for more than doubling the production of tactical guided weapons during a visit to a munitions factory, state media reported.
Of course, the tensions are nothing new. After the existential importance of World War II and before the highly publicized and protested Vietnam War, one of the first and bloodiest events of the Cold War took place relatively quietly on the Korean Peninsula.
The Korean War occurred widely out of the eyes of the global public, receiving little media attention in the United States and very little protest from the people. On the Korean Peninsula, however, war was all-encompassing. The superpowers of the Cold War used North and South Korea's fight for unification to further their own aspirations of global hegemony, at the cost of millions of lives. Global ignorance regarding the true events of the Korean War persists today, as it remains in the shadows of the infamous wars that preceded and succeeded it.
It's time for a history lesson. Read on if you want to know more about the Korean War.