Question: Why was the country called land of morning calm divided at the 38th parallel at the end of WWII?

full_context: Document 1: Korean War: Korea was ruled by Imperial Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. In August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Imperial Japan, as a result of an agreement with the United States, and liberated Korea north of the 38th parallel. U.S. forces subsequently moved into the south. By 1948, as a product of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea was split into two regions, with separate governments. Both claimed to be the legitimate government of all of Korea, and neither accepted the border as permanent. The conflict escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces -- supported by the Soviet Union and China -- moved into the south on 25 June 1950. On 27 June, 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 eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing 88% of the UN's military personnel.
Document 2: Korean War: Korea was considered to be part of the Empire of Japan as an industrialized colony along with Taiwan, and both were part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In 1937, the colonial Governor-General, General Jirō Minami, commanded the attempted cultural assimilation of Korea's 23.5 million people by banning the use and study of Korean language, literature, and culture, to be replaced with that of mandatory use and study of their Japanese counterparts. Starting in 1939, the populace was required to use Japanese names under the Sōshi-kaimei policy. Conscription of Koreans for labor in war industries began in 1939, with as many as 2 million Koreans conscripted into either the Japanese Army or into the Japanese labor force.
Document 3: Division of Korea: The division of Korea between North and South Korea occurred after World War II, ending the Empire of Japan's 35 - year rule over Korea in 1945. The United States and the Soviet Union each occupied a portion of the peninsula, with the boundary between their zones of control along the 38th parallel.
Document 4: Names of Korea: An early attempt to translate these characters into English gave rise to the expression ``The Land of the Morning Calm ''for Korea, which parallels the expression`` The Land of the Rising Sun'' for Japan. While the wording is fanciful, the essence of the translation is valid.
Document 5: Korean War: In China, the war is officially called the "War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea" (simplified Chinese: 抗美援朝战争; traditional Chinese: 抗美援朝戰爭; pinyin: Kàngměiyuáncháo zhànzhēng), although the term "Chaoxian (Korean) War" (simplified Chinese: 朝鲜战争; traditional Chinese: 朝鮮戰爭; pinyin: Cháoxiǎn zhànzhēng) is also used in unofficial contexts, along with the term "Korean Conflict" (simplified Chinese: 韩战; traditional Chinese: 韓戰; pinyin: Hán Zhàn) more commonly used in regions such as Hong Kong and Macau.
Document 6: Division of Korea: At the Tehran Conference and the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union promised to join its allies in the Pacific War in two to three months after victory in Europe. On August 8, 1945, three months to the day after the end of hostilities in Europe, and two days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Soviet troops advanced rapidly, and the US government became anxious that they would occupy the whole of Korea. On August 10, 1945 two young officers -- Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel -- were assigned to define an American occupation zone. Working on extremely short notice and completely unprepared, they used a National Geographic map to decide on the 38th parallel. They chose it because it divided the country approximately in half but would place the capital Seoul under American control. No experts on Korea were consulted. The two men were unaware that forty years before, Japan and pre-revolutionary Russia had discussed sharing Korea along the same parallel. Rusk later said that had he known, he ``almost surely ''would have chosen a different line. The division placed sixteen million Koreans in the American zone and nine million in the Soviet zone. To the surprise of the Americans, the Soviet Union immediately accepted the division. The agreement was incorporated into General Order No. 1 (approved on 17 August 1945) for the surrender of Japan.
Document 7: Comics: Many cultures have taken their words for comics from English, including Russian (Russian: Комикс, komiks) and German (comic). Similarly, the Chinese term manhua and the Korean manhwa derive from the Chinese characters with which the Japanese term manga is written.
Document 8: Division of Korea: A Soviet - US Joint Commission met in 1946 and 1947 to work towards a unified administration, but failed to make progress due to increasing Cold War antagonism and to Korean opposition to the trusteeship. Meanwhile, the division between the two zones deepened. The difference in policy between the occupying powers led to a polarization of politics, and a transfer of population between North and South. In May 1946 it was made illegal to cross the 38th parallel without a permit.
Document 9: Chinese characters: When learning how to write hanja, students are taught to memorize the native Korean pronunciation for the hanja's meaning and the Sino-Korean pronunciations (the pronunciation based on the Chinese pronunciation of the characters) for each hanja respectively so that students know what the syllable and meaning is for a particular hanja. For example, the name for the hanja 水 is 물 수 (mul-su) in which 물 (mul) is the native Korean pronunciation for "water", while 수 (su) is the Sino-Korean pronunciation of the character. The naming of hanja is similar to if "water" were named "water-aqua", "horse-equus", or "gold-aurum" based on a hybridization of both the English and the Latin names. Other examples include 사람 인 (saram-in) for 人 "person/people", 큰 대 (keun-dae) for 大 "big/large//great", 작을 소 (jakeul-so) for 小 "small/little", 아래 하 (arae-ha) for 下 "underneath/below/low", 아비 부 (abi-bu) for 父 "father", and 나라이름 한 (naraimreum-han) for 韓 "Han/Korea".
Document 10: Mapado: "Do" can either mean "province" or "island" in Korean. "Seom" means island in the Korean language as well, although "do" is a Sino-Korean word used in name compound words, but "seom" can stand alone. Filming for "Mapado" did not take place on an island, but in Dongbaek village in Yeonggwang County, South Korea.
Document 11: Japan: Japan (Japanese: 日本; Nippon (ɲippoɴ) or Nihon (ɲihoɴ); formally 日本国 Nippon - koku or Nihon - koku, lit. ``State of Japan '') is a sovereign island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and China in the southwest. Coordinates: 35 ° N 136 ° E ﻿ / ﻿ 35 ° N 136 ° E ﻿ / 35; 136 The kanji that make up Japan's name mean`` sun origin'', and it is often called the ``Land of the Rising Sun ''. Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku, which make up about ninety - seven percent of Japan's land area and often are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one. The population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98.5% of Japan's total population. About 9.1 million people live in Tokyo, the capital of Japan.
Document 12: Korean War: On the night of 10 August in Washington, American Colonels Dean Rusk and Charles H. Bonesteel III were tasked with dividing the Korean Peninsula into Soviet and U.S. occupation zones and proposed the 38th parallel. This was incorporated into America's General Order No. 1 which responded to the Japanese surrender on 15 August. Explaining the choice of the 38th parallel, Rusk observed, "even though it was further north than could be realistically reached by U.S. forces, in the event of Soviet disagreement...we felt it important to include the capital of Korea in the area of responsibility of American troops". He noted that he was "faced with the scarcity of US forces immediately available, and time and space factors, which would make it difficult to reach very far north, before Soviet troops could enter the area". As Rusk's comments indicate, the Americans doubted whether the Soviet government would agree to this. Stalin, however, maintained his wartime policy of co-operation, and on 16 August the Red Army halted at the 38th parallel for three weeks to await the arrival of U.S. forces in the south.
Document 13: History of Korea: After the end of WWII in 1945, the Allies divided the country into a northern area, protected by the Soviets, and a southern area protected primarily by the United States. In 1948, when the powers failed to agree on the formation of a single government, this partition became the modern states of North and South Korea. The peninsula was divided at the 38th Parallel: the ``Republic of Korea ''was created in the south, with the backing of the US and Western Europe, and the`` Democratic People's Republic of Korea'' in the north, with the backing of the Soviets and the communist People's Republic of China. The new premier of North Korea, Kim il - Sung launched the Korean War in 1950 in an attempt to reunify the country under Communist rule. After immense material and human destruction, the conflict ended with a cease - fire in 1953. The two nations officially remain at war because a peace treaty was never signed. Both states were accepted into the United Nations in 1991.
Document 14: Korea: In North Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam, and Chinese and Vietnamese - speaking areas, Korea as a whole is referred to as Chosŏn (조선, Joseon, (tɕoshʌn),, (朝鲜), Cháoxiǎn, (朝鮮), Chōsen, Triều Tiên (朝鮮) lit. ``(land of the) Morning Calm '').`` Great Joseon'' was the name of the kingdom ruled by the Joseon dynasty from 1393 until their declaration of the short - lived Great Korean Empire in 1897. King Taejo had named them for the earlier Kojoseon (고조선), who ruled northern Korea from its legendary prehistory until their conquest in 108 BC by China's Han Empire. This go is the Hanja 古 and simply means ``ancient ''or`` old''; it is a modern usage to distinguish the ancient Joseon from the later dynasty. Joseon itself is the modern Korean pronunciation of the Hanja 朝鮮 but it is unclear whether this was a transcription of a native Korean name (OC * T (r) awser, MC Trjewsjen) or a partial translation into Chinese of the Korean capital Asadal (아사달), whose meaning has been reconstructed as ``Morning Land ''or`` Mountain''.
Document 15: Korean War: Korea was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. In August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and—by agreement with the United States—occupied Korea north of the 38th parallel. U.S. forces subsequently occupied the south and Japan surrendered. By 1948, two separate governments had been set up. Both governments claimed to be the legitimate government of Korea, and neither side accepted the border as permanent. The conflict escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950. On that day, the United Nations Security Council recognized this North Korean act as invasion and called for an immediate ceasefire. On 27 June, the Security Council adopted S/RES/83: Complaint of aggression upon the Republic of Korea and decided the formation and dispatch of the UN Forces in Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the defense of South Korea, with the United States providing 88% of the UN's military personnel.
ground_truth: it divided the country approximately in half
sub_queries: which country is called land of morning calm Answer: Korea
why was Korea divided at the 38th parallel at the end of wwii Answer: it divided the country approximately in half