Geneva Conference (1954)

The Geneva Conference (French: Accords de Genève) was a conference held in Geneva, Switzerland. It discussed the two major wars in Asia at the time: the Korean War and the First Indochina War.

1954 Geneva Conference

Conference regarding French Indochina and the Korean Peninsula
Signed	21 July 1954
Location	Geneva, Switzerland
Effective	23 July 1954
Provisional application	Indochina (North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), Korea (North and South)
Mediators	India (neutral) Poland (communist) Canada (pro - Western)
Original signatories	Korean side: Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Republic of Korea (ROK)  USA Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)  People's Republic of China Indochinese side: France Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) State of Vietnam  Cambodia USA Kingdom of Laos USSR China  United Kingdom
Languages	English French Russian Chinese Vietnamese Korean

In Korea, the conference results in the establishment of Korean Demilitarized Zone around the 48th Parallel with some slight changes and the signing of an Korean Armistice Agreement, between North and South Korea. In Indochina, however, it causes chaos as the State of Vietnam becomes Republic of Vietnam, Democratic Republic of Vietnam gains recognition, independence of the Kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia, temporary division of Vietnam along the 17th Parallel until 1956, when general elections supervised by the UN, India, Poland and Canada are organized, withdrawal of South Vietnam and the United States from the peace plan, causing the start of the Second Indochina War, communist insurgencies in the South of the Vietnamese DMZ, and neighboring countries (Laos, Cambodia and Thailand), Operation Passage to Freedom happens where Vietnamese citizens are given 300 days to choose the north or the south to live in. The vast majority of Vietnamese flee southwards towards the capitalist South to escape the harsh atheist rule of the Communists in the north.