query: When did North and South Korea split?
passage: Division of Korea
The Division of Korea began at the end of World War II in 1945. With the defeat of Japan, the Soviet Union occupied the north of Korea, and the United States occupied the south, with the boundary between their zones being the 38th parallel.
passage: Religion in South Korea
With the division of Korea into two states in 1945, the communist north and the anti-communist south, the majority of the Korean Christian population that had been until then in the northern half of the peninsula, fled to South Korea. Christians who resettled in the south were more than one million. Cheondoists, who were concentrated in the north like Christians, remained there after the partition, and South Korea now has no more than few thousands Cheondoists.