History of the term 'Third World'
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the "First World", while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and their allies represented the "Second World". This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political and economic divisions.