Generation X
Generation X or Gen X is the demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the Millennials. Demographers and researchers use birth years ranging from the early-to-mid 1960s to the early 1980s. Generation Xers were children during a time of shifting societal values and as children were sometimes called the "latchkey generation", due to reduced adult supervision as children compared to previous generations, a result of increasing divorce rates and increased maternal participation in the workforce, prior to widespread availability of childcare options outside the home; as adolescents and young adults, they were dubbed the "MTV Generation". In the 1990s they were sometimes characterized as slackers and disaffected; some of the cultural influences on Gen X youth were the musical genres of grunge and hip hop music, indie films. In midlife, research describes them as active and achieving a work–life balance; the cohort has been credited with entrepreneurial tendencies. The term Generation X has been used at various times throughout history to describe alienated youth.
In the 1950s, Hungarian photographer Robert Capa used Generation X as the title for a photo-essay about young men and women growing up following World War II. The term acquired its modern definition after the release of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, a 1991 novel written by Canadian author Douglas Coupland. In 1987, Coupland had written a piece in Vancouver Magazine titled "Generation X", "the seed of what went on to become the book". Coupland referenced Billy Idol's band Generation X in the 1987 article and again in 1989, but Coupland has stated that The book's title came not from Billy Idol's band, as many supposed, but from the final chapter of a funny sociological book on American class structure titled Class, by Paul Fussell. In his final chapter, Fussell named an "X" category of people who wanted to hop off the merry-go-round of status and social climbing that so frames modern existence. Billy Idol had attributed the name of his band to the book Generation X, a 1965 book on popular youth culture written by two British journalists, Jane Deverson and Charles Hamblett.
Author William Strauss noted that around the time Coupland's 1991 novel was published the symbol "X" was prominent in popular culture, as the film Malcolm X was released in 1992, that the name "Generation X" ended up sticking. The "X" refers to a desire not to be defined. In the U. S. some called Generation Xers the "baby bust" generation because of the drop in the birth rate following the baby boom. Author Neil Howe noted the delay in naming this demographic cohort saying, "Over 30 years after their birthday, they didn't have a name. I think that's germane." The cohort had been referred to as Post-Boomers, Baby Busters, New Lost Generation, latchkey kids, MTV Generation, the 13th Generation. Generation X is the demographic cohort following the post–World War II baby boom, representing a generational change from the baby boomers. Many researchers and demographers use dates which correspond to the fertility-patterns in the population, which results in a Generation X starting-date of 1965, such as Pew Research Center which uses a range of 1965–1980, Australia's McCrindle Research Center which uses 1965–1979, Gallup which uses 1965–1979.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, a multinational professional services network headquartered in London, describes Generation X employees as those born from 1965 to 1980. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe define Generation X as those born between 1961 and 1981, they argue that those born between 1961 and 1964 are part of Generation X rather than the Baby Boomers because they are distinct from the Boomers in terms of cultural identity and shared historical experiences. Some researchers use dates similar to Strauss and Howe's such as the University of Michigan's Generation X Report, a quarterly research report from The Longitudinal Study of American Youth, which defines Generation X as those born between 1961 and 1981. Author Jeff Gordinier, in his 2008 book X Saves the World, defines Generation X as those born between 1961 and 1977 but as late as 1980. Canadian author and professor David Foot divides the post-boomer generation into two groups: Generation X, born between 1960 and 1966. Other demographers and researchers use a wide range of dates to describe Generation X, with the beginning birth-year ranging from as early as 1960 to as late as 1965, with the final birth year as late as 1984.
Due in part to the frequent birth-year overlap and resulting incongruence existing between attempts to define Generation X and Millennials, a number of individuals born in the late 1970s or early 1980s see themselves as being on the cusp "between" the two generations. Names given to those born on the Generation X/Millennial cusp years include Xennials, The Lucky Ones, Generation Catalano, the Oregon Trail Generation. A 2010 Census report counted 84 million people living in the U. S. who are defined by birth years ranging from the early 1960s to the early 80s. In a 2012 article for the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, George Masnick wrote that the "Census counted 82.1 million" Gen Xers in the U. S; the Harvard Center uses 1965 to 1984 to define Gen X so that Boomers and Millennials "cover equal 20-year age spans". Masnick concluded that immigration filled in any birth year deficits during low fertility years of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jon Miller at the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the University of M
Generation
A generation is "all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively". It can be described as, "the average period considered to be about thirty years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, begin to have children of their own". In kinship terminology, it is a structural term designating the parent-child relationship, it is known as biogenesis, reproduction, or procreation in the biological sciences. "Generation" is often used synonymously with cohort in social science. Generations in this sense of birth cohort known as "social generations", are used in popular culture, have been the basis for sociological analysis. Serious analysis of generations began in the nineteenth century, emerging from an increasing awareness of the possibility of permanent social change and the idea of youthful rebellion against the established social order; some analysts believe that a generation is one of the fundamental social categories in a society, while others view its importance as being overshadowed by other factors including class, gender and education, among others.
The word generate comes from the Latin generāre, meaning "to beget". The word generation as a cohort in social science signifies the entire body of individuals born and living at about the same time, most of whom are the same age and have similar ideas and attitudes. A familial generation is a group of living beings constituting a single step in the line of descent from an ancestor. In developed nations the average familial generation length is in the high 20s and has reached 30 years in some nations. Factors such as greater industrialisation and demand for cheap female labour, delayed first pregnancy and a greater uncertainty in relationship stability have all contributed to the increase of the generation length from the late 18th century to the present; these changes can be attributed to social factors, such as GDP and state policy, related individual-level variables a woman's educational attainment. Conversely, generation length has changed little and remains in the low 20s in less developed nations.
An intergenerational rift in the nuclear family, between the parents and two or more of their children, is one of several possible dynamics of a dysfunctional family. Coalitions in families are subsystems within families with more rigid boundaries and are thought to be a sign of family dysfunction. Social generations are cohorts of people born in the same date range and who share similar cultural experiences; the idea of a social generation, in the sense that it is used today, gained currency in the 19th century. Prior to that the concept "generation" had referred to family relationships and not broader social groupings. In 1863, French lexicographer Emile Littré had defined a generation as, "all people coexisting in society at any given time". Several trends promoted a new idea of generations, as the 19th century wore on, of a society divided into different categories of people based on age; these trends were all related to the processes of modernisation, industrialisation, or westernisation, changing the face of Europe since the mid-18th century.
One was a change in mentality about time and social change. The increasing prevalence of enlightenment ideas encouraged the idea that society and life were changeable, that civilization could progress; this encouraged the equation of youth with social change. Political rhetoric in the 19th century focused on the renewing power of youth influenced by movements such as Young Italy, Young Germany, Sturm und Drang, the German Youth Movement, other romantic movements. By the end of the 19th century, European intellectuals were disposed toward thinking of the world in generational terms—in terms of youth rebellion and emancipation. Two important contributing factors to the change in mentality were the change in the economic structure of society; because of the rapid social and economic change, young men were less beholden to their fathers and family authority than they had been. Greater social and economic mobility allowed them to flout their authority to a much greater extent than had traditionally been possible.
Additionally, the skills and wisdom of fathers were less valuable than they had been due to technological and social change. During this time, the period between childhood and adulthood spent at university or in military service, was increased for many people entering white-collar jobs; this category of people was influential in spreading the ideas of youthful renewal. Another important factor was the breakdown of traditional regional identifications; the spread of nationalism and many of the factors that created it encouraged a broader sense of belonging beyond local affiliations. People thought of themselves as part of a society, this encouraged identification with groups beyond the local. Auguste Comte was the first philosopher to make a serious attempt to systematically study generations. In Cours de philosophie positive Comte suggested that social change is determined by generational change and in particular conflict between successive generations; as the members of a given generation age, their "instinct of social conservation" becomes stronger and brings them into conflict with the "normal attribute of youth"—innovation.
Other important theorists of the 19th century were John Stuart Mill and Wilhelm
Western Europe
Western Europe is the region comprising the western part of Europe. Though the term Western Europe is used, there is no agreed-upon definition of the countries that it encompasses. Significant historical events that have shaped the concept of Western Europe include the rise of Rome, the adoption of Greek culture during the Roman Republic, the adoption of Christianity by Roman Emperors, the division of the Latin West and Greek East, the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the reign of Charlemagne, the Viking invasions, the East–West Schism, the Black Death, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Protestant Reformation as well as the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church, the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the two world wars, the Cold War, the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the expansion of the European Union. Prior to the Roman conquest, a large part of Western Europe had adopted the newly developed La Tène culture; as the Roman domain expanded, a cultural and linguistic division appeared between the Greek-speaking eastern provinces, which had formed the urbanized Hellenistic civilization, the western territories, which in contrast adopted the Latin language.
This cultural and linguistic division was reinforced by the political east-west division of the Roman Empire. The Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire controlled the two divergent regions between the 3rd and the 5th centuries; the division between these two was enhanced during Late antiquity and the Middle Ages by a number of events. The Western Roman Empire collapsed. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire known as the Greek or Byzantine Empire and thrived for another 1000 years; the rise of the Carolingian Empire in the west, in particular the Great Schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, enhanced the cultural and religious distinctiveness between Eastern and Western Europe. After the conquest of the Byzantine Empire, center of the Eastern Orthodox Church, by the Muslim Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, the gradual fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire, the division between Roman Catholic and Protestant became more important in Europe than that with Eastern Orthodoxy.
In East Asia, Western Europe was known as taixi in China and taisei in Japan, which translates as the "Far West". The term Far West became synonymous with Western Europe in China during the Ming dynasty; the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci was one of the first writers in China to use the Far West as an Asian counterpart to the European concept of the Far East. In Ricci's writings, Ricci referred to himself as "Matteo of the Far West"; the term was still in use in the late early 20th centuries. Christianity is still the largest religion in Western Europe, according to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, 71.0% of the Western European population identified themselves as Christians. The East–West Schism, which has lasted since the 11th century, divided Christianity in Europe, the world, into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity. With certain simplifications, Western Europe is thus Catholic or Protestant and uses the Latin alphabet. Eastern Europe uses the Greek alphabet or Cyrillic script.
According to this definition, Western Europe is formed by countries with dominant Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, including countries which are considered part of Central Europe now: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and United Kingdom. Eastern Europe, meanwhile is formed by countries with dominant Eastern Orthodox churches, including Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine for instance; the schism is the break of communion and theology between what are now the Eastern and Western churches. This division dominated Europe for centuries, in opposition to the rather short-lived Cold War division of four decades. Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the West and the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches in the east. Due to this religious cleavage, Eastern Orthodox countries are associated with Eastern Europe. A cleavage of this sort is, however problematic.
During the four decades of the Cold War, the definition of East and West was rather simplified by the existence of the Eastern Bloc. Historians and social scientists view the Cold War definition of Western and Eastern Europe as outdated or relegating. During the final stages of World War II, the future of Europe was decided between the Allies in the 1945 Yalta Conference, between the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, the U. S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. Post-war Europe would be divided into two major spheres: the Western Bloc, influenced by the United States, the Eastern Bloc, influenced by the Soviet Union. With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain; this term had been used during World War II by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk in the last days of the war.
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement in the United States was a decades-long struggle with the goal of enforcing constitutional and legal rights for African Americans that other Americans enjoyed. With roots that dated back to the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, the movement achieved its largest legislative gains in the mid-1960s, after years of direct actions and grassroots protests that were organized from the mid-1950s until 1968. Encompassing strategies, various groups, organized social movements to accomplish the goals of ending legalized racial segregation, disenfranchisement, discrimination in the United States, the movement, using major nonviolent campaigns secured new recognition in federal law and federal protection for all Americans. After the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution granted emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, most of whom had been enslaved.
For a period, African Americans voted and held political office, but they were deprived of civil rights under Jim Crow laws, subjected to discrimination and sustained violence by whites in the South. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal rights. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal and local governments and communities had to respond to these situations, which highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans across the country; the lynching of Chicago teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi, the outrage generated by seeing how he had been abused, when his mother decided to have an open-casket funeral, mobilized the African-American community nationwide. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts, such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama. Moderates in the movement worked with Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that overturned discriminatory practices and authorized oversight and enforcement by the federal government.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 expressly banned discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin in employment practices. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities by authorizing federal oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minorities as voters; the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, across the country young people were inspired to take action. From 1964 through 1970, a wave of inner-city riots in black communities undercut support from the white middle class, but increased support from private foundations; the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from about 1965 to 1975, challenged the established black leadership for its cooperative attitude and its practice of nonviolence. Instead, its leaders demanded that, in addition to the new laws gained through the nonviolent movement and economic self-sufficiency had to be developed in the black community.
Many popular representations of the movement are centered on the charismatic leadership and philosophy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in non-violent, moral leadership. However, some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to any one person, organization, or strategy. Before the American Civil War four million blacks were enslaved in the South, only white men of property could vote, the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only. But some free states of the North extended the franchise and other rights of citizenship to African Americans. Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the 13th Amendment that ended slavery. From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent Reconstruction Era trying to establish free labor and civil rights of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to insurgent movements such as the Ku Klux Klan, whose members attacked black and white Republicans to maintain white supremacy.
In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant, the U. S. Army, U. S. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the Enforcement Acts; some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act. In addition, by the early 1870s, other white supremacist and insurgent paramilitary groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage and suppressing black voters, assassinating Republican officeholders. However, if the states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the Federal Government to ge
Generation Z
Generation Z or Gen Z known by a number of other names, is the demographic cohort after the Millennials. Demographers and researchers use the mid-1990s to mid-2000s as starting birth years. There is little consensus regarding ending birth years. Most of Generation Z have used the Internet since a young age and are comfortable with technology and social media. William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote several books on the subject of generations and are credited with coining the term Millennials. Howe has said "No one knows who will name the next generation after the Millennials". In 2005, their company sponsored an online contest in which respondents voted overwhelmingly for the name Homeland Generation; that was not long after the September 11th terrorist attacks, one fallout of the disaster was that Americans may have felt more safe staying at home. Howe has described himself as "not wed" to the name and cautioned that "names are being invented by people who have a great press release. Everyone is looking for a hook."In 2012, USA Today sponsored an online contest for readers to choose the name of the next generation after the Millennials.
The name Generation Z was suggested, although journalist Bruce Horovitz thought that some might find the term "off-putting". Some other names that were proposed included: iGeneration, Gen Tech, Gen Wii, Net Gen, Digital Natives, Plurals. Post-Millennial is a name given by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services and Pew Research in statistics published in 2016 showing the relative sizes and dates of the generations; the same sources showed that as of April 2016, the Millennial generation surpassed the population of Baby Boomers in the USA, the Post-Millennials were ahead of the Millennials in another Health and Human Services survey.iGeneration is a name that several persons claim to have coined. Demographer Cheryl Russell claims to have first used the term in 2009. Psychology professor and author Jean Twenge claims that the name iGen "just popped into her head" while she was driving near Silicon Valley, that she had intended to use it as the title of her 2006 book Generation Me about the Millennial generation, until it was overridden by her publisher.
In 2012, Ad Age magazine thought that iGen was "the name that best fits and will best lead to understanding of this generation". In 2014, an NPR news intern noted that iGeneration "seems to be winning" as the name for the post-Millennials. In September 2018, Jean Twenge saw smartphones and social media as raising an unhappy, compliant "iGen", which she described as the generation born after 1995. Frank N. Magid Associates, an advertising and marketing agency, nicknamed this cohort The Pluralist Generation or Plurals. Turner Broadcasting System advocated calling the post-millennial generation Plurals. MTV has labeled the generation The Founders, based on the results of a survey they conducted in March 2015. MTV President Sean Atkins commented, "they have this self-awareness that systems have been broken, but they can't be the generation that says we'll break it more." Kantar Futures has named this cohort The Centennials. In 2017, a BBC article was published that presented Generation Z individuals referring to themselves as innovative.
In 2017, an Exago article described that doing business today requires understanding of the solid link between innovation and individuals belonging to the Generation Z group. In 2018, a New York Times survey saw support for the name Delta Generation or Deltas; the Times staff selected Delta Generation as its favorite label, with one submitter explaining, "Delta is used to denote change and uncertainty in mathematics and the sciences, my generation was shaped by change and uncertainty."Statistics Canada has noted that the cohort is sometimes referred to as the Internet generation, as it is the first generation to have been born after the popularization of the Internet. In Japan, the cohort is described as Neo-Digital Natives, a step beyond the previous cohort described as Digital Natives. Digital Natives communicate by text or voice, while neo-digital natives use video or movies; this emphasizes the shift from PC to text to video among the neo-digital population. In March 2018, survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, themselves members of Generation Z, started to refer to themselves as the mass shooting generation, though school shootings such as the Columbine High School massacre have been associated with earlier generations.
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary describes Generation Z as generation of people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Pew Research Center defines "Post-Millennials" as born from 1997 onward, choosing this date for "key political and social factors", including September 11th terrorist attacks; this date makes Post-Millennials four years of age or younger at the time of the attacks, so having little or no memory of the event. Pew indicated they would use 1997–2012 for future publications but would remain open to date recalibration. Statistics Canada defines Generation Z as starting from the birth year 1993. Statistics Canada does not recognize a traditional Millennials cohort and instead has Generation Z directly follow what it designates as Children of Baby boomers. Randstad Canada describes Generation Z as those born between 1995–2014. Australia's McCrindle Research Centre defines Generation Z as those born between 1995–2009, starting with a recorded rise in birth rates, fitting their newer definition of a generational span with a maximum of 15 years.
Sparks and Honey and psychologist Jean Twenge describe Generation Z as those born in 1995 or later. In Japan, generations are defined by a ten-year span with "Neo-Digital natives" beginning after 1
National Review
National Review is an American semi-monthly editorial magazine focusing on news and commentary pieces on political and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. It is edited by Rich Lowry. Since its founding, the magazine has played a significant role in the development of conservatism in the United States, helping to define its boundaries and promoting fusionism while establishing itself as a leading voice on the American right; the online version, National Review Online, is edited by Charles C. W. Cooke and includes free content and articles separate from the print edition. Before National Review's founding in 1955, the American right was a unorganized collection of people who shared intertwining philosophies but had little opportunity for a united public voice, they wanted to marginalize what they saw as the antiwar, noninterventionistic views of the Old Right. In 1953 moderate Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, many major magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Reader's Digest were conservative and anticommunist, as were many newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
A few small-circulation conservative magazines, such as Human Events and The Freeman, preceded National Review in developing Cold War Conservatism in the 1950s. In 1953, Russell Kirk published The Conservative Mind, which sought to trace an intellectual bloodline from Edmund Burke to the Old Right in the early 1950s; this challenged the popular notion that no coherent conservative tradition existed in the United States. A young William F. Buckley Jr. was influenced by Kirk's concepts. Buckley, from a wealthy oil family, first was turned down, he met Willi Schlamm, the experienced editor of The Freeman. The statement of intentions read: Middle-of-the-Road, qua Middle of the Road, is politically and morally repugnant. We shall recommend policies for the simple reason; the New Deal revolution, for instance, could hardly have happened save for the cumulative impact of The Nation and The New Republic, a few other publications, on several American college generations during the twenties and thirties.
On November 19, 1955, Buckley’s magazine began to take shape. Buckley assembled an eclectic group of writers: traditionalists, Catholic intellectuals, libertarians and ex-Communists; the group included: Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, Willmoore Kendall, Catholics L. Brent Bozell and Garry Wills; the former Time editor Whittaker Chambers, a Communist spy in the 1930s became a senior editor. In the magazine’s founding statement Buckley wrote: Let’s Face it: Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did National Review not exist, no one would have invented it; the launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that of course; as editors and contributors, Buckley sought out intellectuals who were ex-Communists or had once worked on the far Left, including Whittaker Chambers, William Schlamm, John Dos Passos, Frank Meyer and James Burnham.
When James Burnham became one of the original senior editors, he urged the adoption of a more pragmatic editorial position that would extend the influence of the magazine toward the political center. Smant finds that Burnham overcame sometimes heated opposition from other members of the editorial board, had a significant effect on both the editorial policy of the magazine and on the thinking of Buckley himself. National Review aimed to make conservative ideas respectable, in an age when the dominant view of conservative thought was expressed by Lionel Trilling in 1950: In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation... the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not... express themselves in ideas but only... in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas. William Buckley Jr. on the purpose of National Review: stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it… it is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation…since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class walked in and started to…run just about everything.
There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals’. National Review promoted Barry Goldwater during the early 1960s. Buckley and others involved with the magazine took a major role in the "Draft Goldwater" movement in 1960 and the 1964 presidential campaign. National Review spread his vision of conservatism throughout the country; the early
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South Korea. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border; as a product of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea had been split into two sovereign states in 1948. A socialist state was established in the north under the communist leadership of Kim Il-sung and a capitalist state in the south under the anti-communist leadership of Syngman Rhee. Both governments of the two new Korean states claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea, neither accepted the border as permanent; the conflict escalated into warfare when North Korean military forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—crossed the border and advanced south into South Korea on 25 June 1950. The United Nations Security Council authorized the formation and dispatch of UN forces to Korea to repel what was recognized as a North Korean invasion. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel.
After the first two months of war, South Korean and U. S. forces dispatched to Korea were on the point of defeat, forced back to a small area in the south known as the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, an amphibious UN counter-offensive was launched at Incheon, cut off many North Korean troops; those who escaped envelopment and capture were forced back north. UN forces approached the Yalu River—the border with China—but in October 1950, mass Chinese forces crossed the Yalu and entered the war; the surprise Chinese intervention triggered a retreat of UN forces which continued until mid-1951. In these reversals of fortune, Seoul changed hands four times, the last two years of fighting became a war of attrition, with the front line close to the 38th parallel; the war in the air, was never a stalemate. North Korea was subject to a massive bombing campaign. Jet fighters confronted each other in air-to-air combat for the first time in history, Soviet pilots covertly flew in defense of their communist allies.
The fighting ended on 27 July 1953. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone to separate North and South Korea, allowed the return of prisoners. However, no peace treaty was signed, according to some sources the two Koreas are technically still at war, engaged in a frozen conflict. In April 2018, the leaders of North and South Korea met at the demilitarized zone and agreed to work towards a treaty to formally end the Korean War. In South Korea, the war is referred to as "625" or the "6–2–5 Upheaval", reflecting the date of its commencement on June 25. In North Korea, the war is referred to as the "Fatherland Liberation War" or alternatively the "Chosǒn War". In China, the war is called the "War to Resist America and Aid Korea", although the term "Chaoxian War" is used in unofficial contexts, along with the term "Hán War" more used in regions such as Hong Kong and Macau. In the U. S. the war was described by President Harry S. Truman as a "police action" as the United States never formally declared war on its opponents and the operation was conducted under the auspices of the United Nations.
It has been referred to in the English-speaking world as "The Forgotten War" or "The Unknown War" because of the lack of public attention it received both during and after the war, in relation to the global scale of World War II, which preceded it, the subsequent angst of the Vietnam War, which succeeded it. Imperial Japan destroyed the influence of China over Korea in the First Sino-Japanese War, ushering in the short-lived Korean Empire. A decade after defeating Imperial Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan made Korea its protectorate with the Eulsa Treaty in 1905 annexed it with the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty in 1910. Many Korean nationalists fled the country; the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was founded in 1919 in Nationalist China. It failed to achieve international recognition, failed to unite nationalist groups, had a fractious relationship with its U. S.-based founding president, Syngman Rhee. From 1919 to 1925 and beyond, Korean communists led internal and external warfare against the Japanese.
In China, the Nationalist National Revolutionary Army and the communist People's Liberation Army helped organize Korean refugees against the Japanese military, which had occupied parts of China. The Nationalist-backed Koreans, led by Yi Pom-Sok, fought in the Burma Campaign; the communists, led by Kim Il-sung among others, fought the Japanese in Manchuria. At the Cairo Conference in November 1943, the United Kingdom, the United States all decided that "in due course Korea shall become free and independent". At the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviet Union promised to join its allies in the Pacific War within three months of the victory in Europe. Accordingly, it declared war o
