Flag surviving invasions, wars, division, dictators

Flags tell stories, and one flag of the readers of this blog this week has survived years of invasions, wars, dictators and political division as a symbol of peace and unity in a region of continuing danger to free people.
The distinctive and perhaps most deeply symbolic of flags belongs to the Republic of Korea, known to us as South Korea.
Koreans are hardy, intelligent, hard-working people. They have to be or they wouldn't have survived. The name comes from a Middle Ages dynasty that ruled the peninsula, Goryeo. That and another dynasty ruled for hundreds of years in peace until the rest of the world intruded. Japan annexed it in 1910, and held it until the end of WWII. That's when the country was divided into north and south zones of occupation for the Russians and Americans. A 1948 election led to the creation of the republic and the UN recognized it as the only lawful government. The Russians promptly set up a rival government in the north.

North  Korean flag

In 1950 the North, backed by the Chinese and Soviet Union,  invaded the South, starting the Korean War that involved the US and other nations in a UN "Police Action" to stop communism, just five years after the end of WWII. When MacArthur invaded the north, Communist China retaliated, sending waves of troops into battle and pushing the Americans back. America came close to using another nuclear bomb, but when Eisenhower was elected president, he decided not to.
The war lasted three years and solidified the previous boundaries. The 1953 armistice, never signed by South Korea, split the peninsula along a so-called 2 mile-wide "demilitarized" zone. No peace treaty was ever signed,  so the countries are still technically at war. That border is the most heavily fortified in the world, one of the world's danger points, with U.S. military stationed there. North Korea continues to be in the news, raising the dangers of nuclear war.

Mike Clark's ship in the Korean War

The war is personal to me because my late uncle  Mike was in combat at the Inchon Landing in September, 1852. A signalman on LST 975, he was under fire as the first wave hit the beach in the decisive battle near Seoul behind enemy lines. And my late cousin Charles Rogers Lutrick also served in the war.
Still South Korea suffered under despots until 1987, when military rule ended and civilians took over. Today, the country has perhaps the fastest Internet in the world, the fourth largest Asian economy and is a model of progress and economic growth. South Korea also has strict gun control laws, with the fewest firearms per capital. And just north of it, sits this backward country of have-nots, ruled by someone who calls himself the "Supreme Leader." We Americans don't take to people who think they're supreme over anybody.

Flying over this turmoil is the flag influenced by Taoism and Chinese culture. The white background symbolizes cleanliness of the people, and the center symbol, the "yin and yang" the perfect balance of the universe, a continuous move in infinity. The four trigrams represent justice, fruition, wisdom and vitality.
Just to the north flies the red star flag of the so-called "People's Republic of Korea. " Originally that flag also carried the yin and yang symbol but adopted the red star of communism. Today, the rogue state is puts less emphasis on communism, but hasn't changed its ruthless dictatorship and determinatipn to subject its people and threaten the world with war. I have no readers of this blog from that heavily censored country.

Koreas, at night, from space

If you want to see the difference in two countries, look at nighttime energy usage. Electricity usage is the clearest indicator of economy and personal strength, and in this case, freedom, where everything seems to be in balance, regardless of the outside world. I have colleagues and have had students from South Korea. They reflect those values.

Real "Red" states, rebellion, flags and freedom-1

This is a complicated story of several countries and flags, two of their descendants. and a heritage of war, communism and independence.

Slovenia's flag today

How else could I summarize the countries  and flags of many readers of this blog, Slovenia and Vietnam, both of which have involved American history and affected American politics? In fact, Slovenia ranks tenth in the number of all time readers, and I, who pride myself on geography, had to look it up on the map, even though I knew where Yugoslavia and The Balkans were.
When I grew up in the Cold War, These were "Red" states--Communists. Slovenia was a member of the country Yugoslavia, headed by the dictator Tito who had fought the Nazis in WWII. But when we were all afraid of communism, Tito was as close as we could get to a good Communist because he maintained independence from the USSR. Still though, Yugoslavia's flag carried that dreaded red star we associated with Russia.

Yugoslavian flag, 1945-1991

The area of Yugoslavia, which means "Southern Slavs," has and long and turbulent history, part of the Balkans where World War I was started when Serbs assassinated the Austrian Duke Ferdinand in 1914 in Sarajevo, fighting Austrian dominance. After the war, the country was formed in 1918 as the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. It became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929.
Invaded by the Axis in 1941, the Partisan Resistance Movement, led by Tito, added the red star to the middle of their flags, including Slovenia's. At the end of the war, the national flag of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia continued the red star, until the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991.

That again brought a three-year war to the region and involved American, NATO and Russian forces trying to settle conflicts between the new countries of Bosnia / Herzegovina and Croatia, neighbors to Slovenia and Macedonia--all former parts of Yugoslavia. As a matter of fact,  residents of all those countries have been readers of this blog.
 Today, the national flag, designed in 1991, features three equal horizontal bands of white, blue and red, with the Slovenian coat of arms in the upper hoist side of the flag centred in the white and blue bands. The coat of arms is a shield with the image of Mount Triglav, Slovenia's highest peak, in white against a blue background at the center; beneath it are two wavy blue lines for the Adriatic sea and local rivers, and above it are three six-pointed golden stars arranged in an inverted triangle which are taken from the coat of arms of a great Slovenian dynastic house of the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
The flag's colors come from a medieval coat of arms. The existing tricolor dates from 1894 in the Spring of Nations, designed by a group of students in the capital of Ljubljana.
I told you it was complicated...flags have such interesting stories matching those of their countries.  Next, Vietnam.