Try this thread.

Also, consider what you want to know. As a political entity, North Korea is a child of the Cold War. Do you want to know about Japanese rule in northern Korea? Then I probably can't help you.

There wasn't any such place as North Korea before the Cold War. The division of Korea is a product of the Cold War.

At the start of the 20th century, Korea (what's now North and South Korea) was a traditional Asian monarchy with an emperor at the top and most people being peasants. Like much of Asia at the time, Korea was very backwards and medieval. Also, ironically enough, Christian missionaries had such success in Pyongyang (now the capital of North Korea) that it was called the "Jerusalem of the East".

In 1905, Russia and Japan fought a war over Korea. Japan won and colonized Korea in 1910. The Japanese ruled Korea with an iron fist, attempting to wipe out Korean culture and replace it with Japanese culture (what we now call "cultural genocide"), but the Japanese also modernized and industrialized Korea. Korea remained under Japanese control until the end of World War II, when it was divided into Soviet and American occupations zones. The Soviet and American occupations zones developed into North and South Korea respectively.