Two Korea's - Homeward bound
This takes place in a world where the way Germany treats Austria and france during unification is swapped, germany annexes bohemia and doesn't annex alsace-lorraine. Germany allies with France in ww1, loses. Allies with france in ww2, wins. Its sorta like an imperial tno, Russia collapses, America collapses. thats the context, here the lore for the actual map.
How does one begin to describe the state of China?. The middle kingdom had been brought down, the dragon slain. First extorted in unfair ‘trade’ deals with European powers and the germinating Japanese empire, who stripped it of swathes of land and vital ports.The festering Qing dynasty would fall to revolution. A brief republic would be superseded by a new emperor who would destroy the country, splitting it into barely unified cliques and fully independent rebellious states. The Japanese empire would take advantage of this to expand, invading the region. A brutal war would follow, marked by Chinese insurgency and Japanese brutality, despite this Japan would succeed. China would be reorganized into Japanese territories and puppet states.This would not last however. Many factions within the Chinese state would seek a restoration of Qing borders. In particular the C.R.F (Chinese revolutionary Front) A group of anti-Japanese communist revolutionaries with the goal of ousting the Japanese from the mainland.
Although beginning in Universities within major cities inspired by Mao the ideology would quickly spread to the rural peasant class, who had been oppressed under the Qing, the Republic and now the Japanese. Insurgencies formed across China, leading Japan to fight a 13 year long retreat across China, as they were pushed to the coast by revolutionary forces.Japanese forces on the southern coast would be put into a rout, although successfully fleeing to Taiwan,. However Japan would see greater success in the north, where they were much more firmly entrenched. In the end, Japan would leverage the threat of French and Mongolian intervention and staggering Chinese casualty rates to force a ceasefire, a peace agreement would be struck, mediated by the French. By war's end China proper had been fully unified, with its eastern and southern regions although being de jure a member of the Chinese union, they are de facto almost entirely separated from the state, not unlike the cliques of the warlord era.
By 1990 China would not be satiated, occupying Inner Mongolia and eventually surprising Japan with a massive sweep of Manchuguo, threatening to push into Korea and throw the Japanese into the sea. Seeing this, the French and later Britain would intervene to maintain the power balance in Asia. Settling on the idea of separating Korea by the 38th parrelel. Beginning in 1992 the Korean pennisula would be cut in half, the conflict frozen by Chinas development of Nuclear weapons.