Should we have fought harder in the Korean War?

[Anomalocaris]

What people often forget is the relative poverty of North Korea on the Korean Peninsula is actually a comparatively recent thing. It wasn't always the case, and from the end of Korean War in 1953 until the early 1970s the reverse was true. North Korea both enjoyed both higher growth rates and higher average standard of living than South Korea. From near the end of Korean War until 20 years afterwards, it was our ally the freedom loving brutal right wing military dictatorship in South Korea that looked like by far the worse of two evils for the Korean people to anyone who didn't looked at the world strictly through the glasses of NATO vs Warsaw Pact.