<P> The armistice signed at end of the Korean War required a political conference within three months--a timeline which was not met--"to settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, the peaceful settlement of the Korean question, etc ." </P> <P> As decolonization took place in Asia, France had to relinquish its power over Indochina (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam). While Laos and Cambodia got their independence, France chose to stay in Vietnam . This ended with a war between French troops and the Vietnamese nationalists led by Ho Chi Minh . The latter's army, the Viet Minh, fought a guerrilla war, while the French employed traditional Western technology . The deciding factor was the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, where the French were heavily defeated . This resulted in French withdrawals, and the Geneva conference . </P> <P> It was decided that Vietnam would be divided at the 17th parallel until 1956, when democratic elections would be held under international supervision . All parties involved agreed to this (Ho Chi Minh had strong support in the north, which was more populous than the south, and was thus comfortable that he would win an election), except for the US, who did not want to see Communism spreading in a domino effect throughout Asia . </P> <P> The South Korean representative proposed that the South Korean government was the only legal government in Korea, that UN-supervised elections should be held in the North, that Chinese forces should withdraw, and that UN forces, a belligerent party in the war, should remain as a police force . The North Korean representative suggested that elections be held throughout all of Korea, that all foreign forces leave beforehand, that the elections be run by an all - Korean Commission to be made up of equal parts from North and South Korea, and to increase general relations economically and culturally between the North and the South . </P>

A 1954 conference that divided vietnam at the seventeenth parallel
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