South Koreans protest the stalemate of the Korean War (Photo Courtesy of the New York Times)
The end of the Korean War culminated in much the same place it had started: the 38th parallel. This was disastrous for the people of South Korea as it locked in place an impassible line separating families and nearly guaranteed that the North and South would not be united. This stalemate was mostly negative for the United States as they had spent a great deal of money and lost the lives of numerous people. Ultimately, this was not the worst possible outcome as the US Military had contained communism mostly to the space it had occupied before the conflict.