After WWII, the west just wasn't willing to keep their armies mobilized, so Stalin saw an easy win if they took over the entire Korean Peninsula.
the UN did something to stop aggression.
And the overlooked factor: Mac Arthur. He thought outside the box, and when Pusan was surrounded, pulled a "ScipioAfricanus"* manuveur on them by hitting their supply lines: he invaded in the north. (bad news? He suggesting nuking the invading Chinese army so Truman fired him).
Here is a SP podcast about the two Koreas.
,,,,,,,,,,,,One of their comments is about K Pop and K dramas, which are forbidden in the North but are smuggled in and show the propaganda the people are being fed are all lies.
K dramas have a lot of gritty plots, but their popularity, not to mention the popularity of K pop, is big here in Asia.
And that has geopolitical implications in Asia, as is noted in the StrategyTalk I posted above.
Popular culture does affect the way people think: one does see the popularity of Bollywood films in South Asia as a push back against the rabid Islamicist ideas (spread by Saudi funded schools) and how rock and roll helped influence the popular rejection of communism in Europe: By spreading ideas that go against a rigid philosophy.
Right now, China is trying to ban the "girly girl" fashion of the boy bands in K pop. They worry about the effeminate role models for boys (in a cultures where men out number women and some women don't want to marry at all).
the irony? In Korea men have to serve 18 months in the miltary, so most of the K Pop idols have had military training.
and the KDrama/KPop fans are not above using their influence in politics even outside of Asia.
I remember the discussion on the KDrama fansites like Dramabeans where fangirls helped keep people from attending a Trump rally in Oklahoma by coordinating a fake ticket buy out.
In Colombia, the k-pop memes helped push against the right wing government.
Unlike the USA, where you make your own band and fight your way to the top, the K Pop is designed so that they train singers etc for years before they become stars. It's a top down business.
* Most people know about Hannibal, who is supposed to be so great because he destroyed a Roman army led by nincompoops. Ah, but he was destroyed because Scipio Africanus did a long term strategy and hit base in Spain, so he couldn't get reinforcements, and then later attacked Carthage so Hannibal had to go home.
by the way: destroying the supply lines was a military tactic also used by Admiral Yi against the Japanese invasion of Korea, using the tides to help him destroy their navy so they couldn't get supplies (in the same way that the Greeks let the Persian fleet collide and sink each other at Salamis).
and of course, Russia used similar tactics against both Napoleon and Hitler, using the weather to help them.
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