These lectures explore the beginnings of the Cold War in Asia with particular focus on the Korean War and the "five tigers" looking to control Korea: The United States, China, Russia, North Korea and South Korea. We will look at such luminaries as Douglas MacArthur, Matthew Ridgeway, Kim Il-Sung, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin. We will examine the development of modern Korea; the lead-up to the Korean War and the bloody, tortuous path the war took concluding in a decades-long truce that sent North and South Korea on completely different trajectories that continue to the present day.

Jared Day, PhD., taught American history at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for sixteen years. His areas of specialization are United States political, urban and cultural history and world history from the fifteenth century to the present. He is the author of several books along with numerous popular and peer-reviewed articles. He now teaches at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, CT.