General Douglas MacArthur, UN Command CiC (seated),observes the naval shelling of Incheon from USS MountMcKinley, 15 September 1950 On August 22, the U.S. State Department renewed its ban onthe use of U.S. passports for travel to North Korea. It was the U.S. that divided Korea along the38th parallel in 1945 and separated millions of families,occupied the South, and dropped more than 600,000 tons ofbombs over the peninsula during the Korean War.