Today, China and North Korea are two extremely powerful communist countries. However, communism was not always present. In fact, communism was a new political theory proposed and published on February 21, 1848 by Karl Marx in his famous “Communist Manifesto”. In 1949, about one hundred years after the writing of the Communist Manifesto, Mao Zedong came to power and from then on adopted a form of communism. It was after World War II and the Chinese Civil War that the Chinese Communists succeeded in overthrowing Chiang Kai Shek and the Chinese Nationalist Party; therefore, this new government vowed to form a “brand new” China, one that would model and closely resemble Marxism-Leninism. The geography, common history, and ideology of North Korea and China have proven to make them similar in many ways in terms of reforms and revolutions; However, it was not until the death of Mao Zedong and the rise of Deng Xiao Ping in the mid-1970s that we drew the clear line between North Korea's and China's communism. Likewise, North Korea began practicing communism when its land was divided between the North and China. South due to the 38th Parallel. In August 1945, the Soviet army ruled North Korea until a domestic regime could be formed. Then, the territory of Korea was divided between Soviet and American forces. Due to North Korea's refusal to join the United Nations, both North and South Korea began to struggle for the sovereignty of the country as a whole; thus, this “fight” triggered the Korean War on June 12, 1950. The terrible war lasted three years and finally ended in 1953 due to an armistice; however, the two countries are technically still at war with each other because a peace treaty was never signed. China and North Korea may be ve...... middle of paper ....... 2005. Web. 05 March 2011. "Kim Sung Il." Dictators and Dictatorships. 23 July 1998. Web. 4 March 2011. .Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, Jones Gareth. Stedmann and Karl Marx. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print."Quotes from Mao Tse Tung." Marxists Internet Archive. October 23, 2001. Web. February 24, 2011. .Stewart, Whitney. Deng Xiaoping: leader in a changing China. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2001. Print.Yun, Tae-gyu. The Constitution of North Korea: Its changes and implications. [New York, NY]: Fordham University School of Law, 2004. Print.Zhou, Zhiping, and Xuedong Wang. Newspaper Readings: The United States in the People's Daily. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993. Print.