History12 - Australia's Engagement with Asia 1945-2001: Korean War 1950-1953

Korean War was the first war in which a world organization, the United Nations (UN), played a military role. The Korean War was a major challenge for the United Nations, which had come into existence only five years earlier.

The Korean War had its immediate origins in the collapse of the Japanese empire at the end of World War II in September 1945. Unlike China, Manchuria, and the former Western colonies seized by Japan in 1941–42, Korea, annexed to Japan since 1910, did not have a native government or a colonial regime waiting to return after hostilities ceased.