>Taiwan was not partitoned in half, and split, and experienced a proxy civil war that killed 20% of the population like Korea did during the korean war.
>Taiwan was treated as an Allied power thanks to the ROC government relocating there, and recieved Allied privileges and considered a victor of ww2 despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of taiwanese men fought for japan during ww2. so taiwan was not treated as former axis by america like korea and japan were.
>Taiwan did not experience damage from the chinese civil war, did not fall under chinese communist party rule and the cultural revolution and great leap forward.
>Taiwan was not occupied by American army like south korea and japan.
>Taiwan has the highest gdp per capita (ppp) out of all east asian countries and biggest semiconductor manufacturer in the world
America and Russia divided Korea along the 38th parallel because of a National Geographic magazine.
In the summer of 1945, the Soviets were planning to invade and occupy the northern half of Korea. But, Americans asked their Soviet allies to allow them space to occupy the southern half of the peninsula.
So on 10 August 1945, two American 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 Americans proposed to the Soviets that the 38th parallel be used to divide the Soviet and American occupation zones in Korea and the Soviets agreed.
In this decision, the seeds were laid for the Korean War, a war in which 20% of the Korean population would die in.
