SparkNotes: The Korean War (1950-1953): Eisenhower, War's End, and the Aftermath Eisenhower, War's End, and the Aftermath Eisenhower, War's End, and the Aftermath → The Long Path of Negotiations Eisenhower, War's End, and the Aftermath, page 2 page 1 of 2 Summary After taking office, Eisenhower soon replaced General James Van Fleet, who had started arguing for an all-out invasion, with Lt. General Maxwell Taylor. No immediate progress was made in the negotiations other than the exchange of a few prisoners in March of 1953. In order to show strength, the Communists made an attack on Americans at "Pork Chop Hill" in April. Eisenhower was unfazed, and by the end of April talks were once again underway Panmunjom. On June 8, the two sides finally came to an agreement over the tricky POW (Prisoner of War) issue, outlining their solutions in a document call the "Terms of Reference." Under this agreement, those POWs that refused to return to Communist territory would be placed under the auspices of a neutral commission for a period of three months.

If, after the end of those three months, the POWs still refused to be repatriated, they would be allowed to go free. With the POW issue solved, it seemed that a final peace treaty was in sight. After the "Terms of Reference", however, the Communists pressed for some final negotiating leverage with a one-week offensive in June. And on a second front, the US had to deal with the problem of Syngman Rhee, who continued to spout promises about Korean reunification, and who promised to invade North Korea even if he only had the ROK army on his side. The US considered organizing a coup to remove Rhee from power, but never carried the action out. Instead, the US convinced Rhee to stop shouting for reunification by promising to intervene on South Korea's behalf if North Korea ever did invade, and by promising $1 billion in aid for South Korea's economic recovery after the war. Despite these minor crises, agreement was finally reached at Panmunjom. On July 27, 1953, The UN, China, and North Korea signed an armistice. South Korea refused to sign, but with little effect.

Under the terms of the treaty neither side would be allowed to increase the number of non-Korean military personnel stationed in Korea. The armistice also established a 2.5 mile wide buffer between North and South Korea along the 38th parallel, termed the "demilitarized zone." Within this zone, all troops and weapons were banished. In practice, however, the zone was heavily militarized, with over 1 million troops facing off. In fact, because South Korea never signed the armistice, the two countries remain technically at war even today. After the war, North Korea and South Korea remained divided, a symbol of the effect of the Cold War similar to the division of Germany and Berlin. Families were broken up by the war and lived on opposite sides of the demilitarized zone, unable to visit or even communicate with each other. Syngman Rhee's southern regime became even more dictatorial, and in 1960 he resigned after student riots. South Korea only became more unstable with his departure, and it is only in the last two decades that South Korea has really seen sustained economic growth.

In North Korea, Kim Il-sung developed a full-scale personality cult, and ruled until his death in 1994. Tensions between the two countries remain to this day, perhaps seen best in North Korea's boycott of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, to which the USSR and PRC sent athletes. The legacy of the Korean War continues to haunt the United States, as the US worries about North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons. Commentary Along with his vast military experience and easy-going attitude, part of Eisenhower's confidence in the spring of 1953 stemmed from the fact that the US had successfully tested an which was vastly more powerful than an A- Bomb, and had thereby surged ahead in the arms race with the USSR (the Soviets shocked the US by testing their own H-bomb in late 1953). Eisenhower considered nuclear bombs to be just another weapon and was considering using small nuclear bombs in Korea, especially because, for their price, they packed more punch than conventional weaponry. He never actually authorized their use, however.

1 Korean War - Panmunjom, Korea Panmunjom, Korea Panmunjom, Korea click image to enlarge Peace talks usually take place after an enemy has been defeated and the killing has ceased. Toward the end of the Korean conflict, however, neither of these conditions existed. The war was fought only as a campaign within the larger context of the ongoing Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. The communists wanted to see if the West would respond to the challenge in Korea. Truman and the United Nations were determined not to let the challenge go unanswered. The two sides had fought to a stalemate along the former border between North Korea and South Korea, the 38th parallel. By the summer of 1951, it was clear that unless each side wanted to escalate the scale of the conflict, the Cold War would not be decided in Korea. So both sides faced the difficult task of restoring peace. The UN leadership and the Soviet Union agreed that the time had come to talk about peace terms. As the major supplier of financial, military, and political assistance to communist China and to North Korea, the Soviets played a major role in bringing the communists to the conference table.

During May and June 1951, secret and unofficial discussions took place between representatives of the United States and the Soviet Union. These behind-the-scenes contacts resulted in an announcement on June 23, 1951, by the Soviet Union that it was in favor of opening peace discussions between North Koreans, communist China, and a representative of the United Nations. Those talks began on July 10, 1951, at a small town called Kaesong, just north of the 38th parallel and within reach of enemy lines. On several occasions, UN negotiators on their way to the talks were harassed by North Korean soldiers. As a result, the conference site was moved to a safer spot, a town called Panmunjom, just west of Kaesong but outside the reach of communist forces. The UN negotiating team was headed by Adm. Turner Joy, General Ridgway's naval chief. He and his staff confronted two Chinese generals, Hsieh Fang and Teng Hua, and three North Korean generals, Nam Il, Lee Sang Cho, and Chang Pyong San. The Most Bizarre Events in History The peace talks were among the most prolonged and bizarre events in diplomatic history.

The talks were carried out while the most vicious and destructive phases of the conflict occurred. From July until November 1951, during the battles on the ridge lines, there were nearly 60,000 UN casualties, of which more than 22,000 were American, and almost 234,000 North Korean and Chinese casualties. The talks dragged on for nearly twenty-five months. Admiral Joy described them as proceeding "with all the speed of a stiff concrete mix." The talks were stalled by disagreements over the shape of the negotiating table, by the intrusion of armed soldiers, and by the occasional walkout of angry negotiators. But peace was so clifficult to achieve because of the substantial differences that continued to divide the two warring sides. Like everything else about the Korean War, the peace talks were simply another manifestation of the Cold War. Neither side wished to give the enemy an advantage in this ongoing ideological conflict. All the items on the agenda created major disputes. One issue was the location of the final line dividing North and South Korea. UN troops had moved north of the 38th parallel along a line of ridges in order to hold strong positions on high ground.

Admiral joy wanted to keep that advanced line as the new boundary. The communists found, this line unacceptable. So the two armies continued to battle for the land between the ridges and the 38th parallel for another two years. The communists also opposed the idea of a twenty-mile-wide demilitarized zone between the two countries that the UN negotiators wanted as a buffer area against future attack. The UN negotiating team anticipated the continued presence of a UN peacekeeping force in Korea after the fighting ceased. The communists adamantly opposed the ongoing presence of "foreign troops" on Korean soil. Prisoners of War Finally, the peace talks bogged down over the emotionally charged issue of what to do with prisoners of war. The United Nations wanted all prisoners to be free to choose where they wanted to live. The communists feared freedom of choice would result in the refusal of communist prisoners to return to their countries. For a brief moment in 1952, Americans believed that the dreary conflict would end. Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected to succeed Harry Truman as preaiclent. One of Eisenhower's campaign promises had been to break through the deadlocked negotiations at Panmunjom.

So in November 1952, Eisenhower fulfilled his campaign promise to "go to Korea." But his three-day visit did nothing to speed up the peace talks. Instead, Eisenhower discovered, as Truman already knew, that the peace talks were tightly bound up in the ideological rhetoric of the Cold War. It would require an extraordinary event to b break the deadlock. As a result, the talks dragged on endlessly while thousands of men on both sides died, not only on the battlefields of Korea but also in the prison camps. In fact, the fate of the prisoners of war (POWs) often seemed more important in the negotiations than that of the soldiers on the front lines. Admiral Joy was especially concerned about freeing UN POWs because reports of their treatment were horrifying. United Nations representatives knew they had to get these POWs out soon or they would not survive. Communist Atrocities There were thousands of POW lives at stake. During the first months of the Korean crisis, both sides captured many prisoners as the armies moved swiftly across the Korean peninsula. When the UN troops moved north in September and October 1950, they begun to discover how prisoners were treated by the enemy. Advance units came upon the bodies of dead prisoners.

The hands of these UN prisoners had been tied behind their backs, and most of the men had been shot in the back of the head. The worst single atrocity of the war came to light as the English Army moved north from Pyongyang, the North Korean capitol, in October 1950. Brig. Gen. Frank A. Allen, Jr., and his party discovered a sad and sickening sight near a railroad tunnel near Myongucham, about five miles northwest of the town of Sunchon. General Allen came upon the bodies of sixty-five American POWs who had been murdered, starved to death, or died of disease as the North Koreans hurried north with their prisoners, trying to escape the bombs of the planes that accompanied the advancing UN army. tly details of their experience. One survivor related the following account: Two trains, cach carrying about one hundred and fifty American POWs left Pyongyang on October 17, 1950, crawling slowly and repairing the heavily broken tracks as they went. These were the survivors of a group of three hundred and seventy Americans the North Koreans had marched north from Seoul shortly after the Inchon landing. Each day five or six Americans died of dysentery, starvation, or exposure.

Their bodies were removed from the train. A few Americans escaped along the way. On October 20th, while a paratroop drop was in progress, the second of the two truins remained in the Myongucham tunnel. It still had about one hundred Americans, crowded into open coal gondolas and boxcars. That evening, the North Korean guards took the Americans in three groups to get their evening meal. The North Koreans shot them down as they waited for it. Most of the Americans who survived did so by feigning death. The guards and the train left that night. These atrocities were not isolated events. Much later, the world would learn about the horrible conditions in which UN POWs lived and died in the Chinese prison camps near tile YaIu River. PFC Lawrence Bailey of C Company in the Thirty-second infantry was one of the few POWs to survive to tell the story of those camps.

He describes in graphic detail the conditions under which he lived in "Death Valley," a POW camp consisting of a group of unheated huts run by the Chinese communists: After a month or so in Death Valley, people who had frozen body parts actually started pulling them off - toes and fingertips and ears - and putting them in a pot the Koreans left in our huts. I don't know what the Koreans did with those rotting parts of human beings. I do know that some of our people were talking about eating them. I hope no one ever did, but I wouldn't be surprised if one had. You get a little crazy when you are starving. I lost all the toes on my right foot and four from my left and I lost the little finger of my right hand. By the time we had been in Death Valley for a month people were dying, two and three every night, mostly from starvation and untreated wounds. But there were deaths from other causes, too. The lice were thick, and we had cases of what must have been typhus. It was hard to be sure. There were no medics with us. In a way, the dead helped the rest of us stay alive.

We would keep the bodies covered up for as long as we could so that we could collect the dead men's rations. The knowledge of the dismal fate of the many captives still unaccounted for made their liberation a major priority at the peace talks. Operation Little Switch In April 1953, the United Nations and communist negotiators were able to come to the first agreement over POWs, called Operation Little Switch. Under the agreement, sick and wounded POWs would he exchanged. Many of the other outstanding POW issues were resolved within the next three months. By June, both sides had agreed to establish a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission to oversee the return of POWs. Those prisoners who wished to return to their homes were free to do so within sixty days. Those who refused repatriation, or a return to their country, were turned over to the commission, consisting of Indian troops. The troops would protect the POWs for ninety days, during which time communist educators were available in case the POWs wished to change their mind. Many feared that the exchanges would not be carried out smoothly. Operation Big Switch, the major exchange of POWs, began in August 1953.

UN prisoners were turned over to the UN command, and those North Koreans and communist Chinese who wished were permitted to stay in South Korea or go to Formosa. At last, the Korean War was over. An armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. Korea remained divided at the 38th parallel, roughly where the conflict started three long years before. North Korea ended up being about twenty-one thousand square miles smaller than it had been in June 1950. The political differences between the two halves of Korea continued to poison relations between them. Peace negotiations | Ceasefire at Panmunjom | Australia's involvement in the Korean War Australia's involvement in the Korean War Site Search Ceasefire at Panmunjom, 27 July 1953 Peace negotiations In the first, manoeuvre, phase of the Korean War both sides aspired to total victory to unify the country under either the northern or the southern government... Show caption Korea, 1955.

Although the Korean War has been over for more than two years, the truce camp at Panmunjom, sited between the communist and United Nations Forces, is still the only point where representatives of the two sides meet to settle disputes arising out of the truce agreement. Here the American Officer in Command of the truce camp, Major S J Dankevich (right) makes a point to a member of the Swedish mediating team. [AWM SWEJ0129] ... Enlarge the photo of the truce camp representatives In December 1950, the United States – by far the most influential United Nations country at war in Korea – abandoned this aim as it saw no prospect of complete victory now that China had intervened in the war. China, the main player in the alliance between North Korea, the Soviet Union and China , took another six months to come to the same conclusion. After the defeat of the communist fifth phase offensive in mid-1950, it too decided the war would only end with a negotiated peace. Negotiations opened at Kaesong on 10 July 1951 and were later moved to Panmunjom.

The issues to be settled were where the ceasefire line – in effect the new border – would be, what would be the long-term arrangements to maintain the ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners of war (including 30 Australians ) and arrangements for reaching a more detailed settlement of the conflict. During the remaining two years of the war there was fighting along the now reasonably static front as both sides wished to influence the negotiations by winning battles. Operation Commando was one of these battles during which 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment took Maryang San losing over 100 casualties. The pattern of negotiating while fighting, together with some periods when negotiations were halted in protest at the actions of the other side, continued to the very end of the war. Australia’s last battle, at the Hook , took place in the week leading up to the ceasefire. The building in Panmunjom village, 52 kilometres north-west of Seoul, where the ceasefire was negotiated and signed. [AWM P04641.047] ... Enlarge the photo of the building in Panmunjom By 1953 both China and the United States were keen to find a solution to the impasse.

President Dwight Eisenhower stepped up the bombing of North Korea and even considered threatening the use of atomic weapons if China did not agree to peace. However, the obstacle was not China but the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin , who believed continuing the war was to the advantage of the Soviet Union from a broader Cold War perspective. His death on 5 March 1953 cleared the way for a ceasefire. A four-kilometre wide demilitarised zone , on the line held on the day the ceasefire came into effect, was agreed to. Prisoners of war were exchanged and further negotiations for a comprehensive peace were planned but did not take place. A meeting between the concerned powers in Geneva in 1954 also failed to reach agreement and all negotiations ceased in 1955. North and South Korea remain technically still at war. A Neutral Nations Supervisory Committee set up in 1953 continues to this day to monitor the ceasefire. Both sides maintain large military forces along the demilitarized zone where more than a thousand people have died in border skirmishes.

Site Contents Peace Talks at Panmunjom - The Korean War The Korean War Peace Talks at Panmunjom October 25th, 1951 - July 27th, 1953 The Korean peace talks were moved from Kaesong to Panmunjom on October 25, 1951. This relocation was decided in the terms of the Panmunjom Security Agreement, signed earlier on October 22. Participating in these talks were the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, negotiating with the United Nations Command (U.N.C) headed by the U.S. The Panmunjom peace talks were guided by a five-item agenda. Item one was the agenda itself, being agreed upon beforehand. The second item was the Military Demarcation Line and Demilitarized Zone. On November 27, 1951 both sides agreed upon a Military Demarcation Line along the line of contact at the current time. Although the line changed in a few small ways, it was largely the same when the Armistice was signed. Next they had to work out the details of maintaining the Armistice.

Though both sides wanted a Military Armistice Commission with equal representation from the U.N.C. and the Korean People’s Army, the U.N.C. wanted this commission to be able to enforce the Armistice throughout all of Korea. This was contrary the Korean People’s Army that wanted the Military Armistice Commission to only be able to enforce the Armistice in the demilitarized zone. In the March of 1952 both sides agreed upon the establishment of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission or NNSC. This was an organization of nations neutral to the Korean War that were willing to oversee the maintaining of the Armistice. Among these nations were Poland, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and Sweden. Each side was also allowed five ports to replace their broken down or old military equipment. However, there were two major areas of contention. The first being the U.N.C. demand for a ban on North Korean airfield repair; the second being the Korean People’s Army and Chinese People’s Volunteer Army demand for Soviet Union inclusion NNSC. These issues would remain through most of the negotiations.

On February 19, 1952 both sides resolved item five of the agenda, “Recommendations to the Governments Concerned on Each Side”. They agreed to hold a meeting three months after the signing of the Armistice to address a few major remaining issues. The largest hang up the conference met, halting any major progress for a year and a half, was item four, “Arrangements Relating to Prisoners of War.” The original plan was to exchange all prisoners at the signing of the Armistice, but this did not work because of a large section of U.N.C. prisoners that didn’t wish to return to North Korea. Some of them were South Koreans that had been captured and force into service, who hoped to return to the Republic of Korea (South Korea). As well, a large number of Chinese soldiers preferred not return to China but instead move to Taiwan. The United States refused to force any citizens to repatriate against their will, while the Korean People’s Army and Chinese People’s Volunteer Army didn’t want to give up such a large number of prisoners. Both sides eventually agreed to the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, that allowed countries a limited time to attempt to convince their citizens to return.

After a series of back and forth negotiations on specifics, the Armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. Opinion: The Panmunjom Peace talks not only made way for an Armistice ending gunfire between the two sides, it also established the guidelines for all future interactions between North and South Korea. The border determined during the conferences stands today, and nothing more than minor skirmishes have occurred between North and South Korea since the signing of the Armistice. By staying focused on ending the conflict and working diligently, this conference resolved major differences between the many nations involved. This allowed for each nation to have some of their requests met. Essentially, the Panmunjom Peace Talks ended the Korean War. Create a free website The Korean War and the peace treaty issue | New Eastern Outlook The Korean War and the peace treaty issue Country: Politics On May 29, 2013, the DPRK offered South Korea a peace treaty in place of the current Armistice Agreement concluded at the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War. The newspaper of North Korea’s ruling party published an article on that.

“There is an urgent need to replace the armistice agreement, which is a relic of the war, with a permanent peace regime,” the newspaper said. That need actually exists, and to understand it let’s turn to history. A cease-fire agreement was concluded on July 27, 1953. It was signed by DPRK delegation head Nam Il and UN delegation head William Harrison. Kim Il-sung and Peng Dehuai, commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers, were not present in Panmunjom for fear of provocations; they added their signatures to the document later. UN Forces commander Vice commander Mark Clark also signed it later. South Korean General Choi Duk Shin, who was present at the signing ceremony, refused to sign the document because the Syngman Rhee regime, which was much more repugnant than North Korea’s regime, advocated continuing the war. The agreement consisted of a preamble, five articles and an appendix.

Article I fixed the demarcation line and provided for the withdrawal of forces two kilometers away from it in order to create a demilitarized zone; Article II called for an end to the hostilities and the removal of the troops of both sides from the demilitarized zone within 72 hours after the Agreement took effect.1 In addition, the parties were obligated to stop introducing military reinforcements (armed personnel) into Korea, except that units and personnel could be rotated on a man-for-man basis. It also provided for the replacement of military equipment and weapons through certain points of entry, also on a piece-for-piece basis; the introduction of new weapons was prohibited: I will discuss that point (paragraph 13d) separately, for reasons that will become clear later. Article III concerned the repatriation of prisoners of war; Article IV recommended that the concerned parties convene a political conference to negotiate the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea and the peaceful settlement of the Korean question; Article V stated that amendments and additions to the Armistice Agreement must be mutually agreed to by the commanders of the opposing sides.

Military operations thus came to an end, but the international conference that the fourth article called for was held in Geneva in late April 1954 and achieved nothing. Each of the Korean states offered its own package of proposals, but their ideas were mutually incompatible. Although the North was more inclined to make concessions, the United States and its allies gave ultimatums and even refused to enter preliminary agreements where viewpoints coincided. As a result, after declining a final package of proposals from the Soviet Union and the DPRK, the countries that participated in the intervention announced on June 16, 1994 that no agreement had been reached at the conference. In September 1956, the United States decided to deploy nuclear weapons in South Korea even though it contravened paragraph 13d. Nevertheless, Washington informed the DPRK on June 21, 1957 that it would not be bound by the terms of that paragraph. The DPRK protested the decision, not least because the unilateral revision of the terms of the Armistice violated Article V of the Agreement.

However, in January 1958 nuclear weapons were deployed in South Korea (including missiles capable of reaching China and the Soviet Union).2 In 1958, the Chinese People’s Volunteers withdrew from the peninsula — but the Americans have remained in South Korea to the present day because their presence there is officially governed by the Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Republic of South Korea, not the Armistice Agreement. Thus, the Armistice Agreement was seen as a preliminary document, and the final outcome of the war was to be recorded later. However, that was never done. Moreover, in deploying nuclear weapons in South Korea, the United States violated the agreement by unilaterally abrogating one of its important articles. The extent to which it remained in force after that is a question for the lawyers. The incomplete end to the Korean War set a bad precedent that has lasted to the present. Ordinarily in such situations a peace treaty is signed that records a war’s end and changes in the world order resulting from military operations (the redrawing of borders, resolution of property issues, prisoner exchange, etc.; the 1953 Agreement covered many of these issues). Everything is complicated.

The Russian scholar Kim Yen Un, who has written a great deal about the Korean War, sums up the problem as follows: “Does the United Nations have the right to sign a peace treaty with a member of the UN? If so, who can sign a peace treaty on behalf of the UN? Will the UN now give the United States the authority to sign such a document, and on what basis will it do so? Would a country that did not sign the Armistice Agreement have the right to sign a peace treaty? And, in general, what will come from the signing of a peace treaty 57 years after the war’s end? We are surviving without a peace treaty with Germany, because Nazi Germany does not exist and the FRG is not its legal successor. Nor does the Soviet Union exist, although Russia is its legal successor. The main thing on the Korean peninsula today is to remember the lessons of that terrible war and do everything possible and impossible to prevent another one, because that war convincingly demonstrated that such means cannot be used to unify a country and a people.” Let’s go into these ideas in more detail. First of all, the Korean states are legally still at war because a cease-fire agreement is not the same as a peace treaty.

The DPRK has periodically said (in 1994, 1996, 2003, 2006 and 2009) that it does not consider itself bound by the Agreement, and it withdrew from it in 2013. The Republic of Korea has not come to terms with the situation at all. Moreover, the Agreement was without legal force up until the end of Syngman Rhee’s rule, and South Korea would return to its strategy of pushing north at the first opportunity. During perestroika and against the backdrop of a changing world, however, Pyongyang and Seoul not only simultaneously joined the United Nations on September 17, 1991, they signed the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression and Exchanges and Cooperation on December 13, 1991. In that document, the two parties actually acknowledged each other’s sovereignty and independence. North and South Korea pledged not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs, to refrain from hostile actions against each other and to respect each other’s socioeconomic systems.

This language partially ended the legal uncertainty and political ambiguity of the situation in which each country considered itself the only legal state on the peninsula and viewed the territory of the other country as “temporarily occupied,” and the stated obligation of the parties to refrain from the use of force laid the groundwork for increasing stability and normalizing the situation. To documents of that type we might add the summations of the inter-Korean summits of 2000 and 2007. However, the agreements reached under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun were disavowed by Lee Myung-bak in 2010 (when the corvette Cheonan was sunk), and the crisis of April 2013 caused the DPRK to no longer consider itself bound by the terms of either the 1953 Armistice Agreement or the 1991 document. Thus, relations between the two Korean states are completely unregulated, and they are technically still at war. The peace treaty proposal is more than reasonable under the circumstances.

Second, if a peace treaty is to be signed with the Armistice Agreement as its touchstone, South Korea technically is not entitled to sign it because it did not sign the cease-fire agreement and thus did not cast itself as a belligerent. Technically, the parties involved in the conflict were North Korea, the Chinese People’s Volunteers (not the PRC itself) and the United Nations (not the United States). Furthermore, a peace treaty should set forth the postwar situation, and for that to happen those involved in the war must be precisely identified. However, the United States entered the Korean War under a UN flag, and China did so as “volunteers.” Neither country officially took part in the hostilities: To do so under their own flag at that time would have run the risk of starting World War III, but the war actually took on the form we are familiar with specifically because the conflict was internationalized. The identification of the participants is closely associated with the issue of responsibility, which, in my opinion, both Washington and Beijing would like to avoid. Third, at present both Koreas are members of the United Nations, and that means the organization would be signing a peace treaty with one of its members.

That would create a nasty legal case. Moreover, despite the progress that has been made since Syngman Rhee’s time, the North and the South are still far from fully recognizing each other. A peace treaty between the North and the South would mean that the “other side” is not a group of bandits and puppets illegally occupying half of the country, but an independent state and a full party to negotiations. In that context, the conclusion of a peace could constitute the abandonment of claims to the “temporarily lost territories.” That would be equally unpleasant for both the South, which still has a “Five Provinces Administrative Bureau” for governing the North, and for North Korea, which writes the names of South Korean government bodies only in quotation marks. However, the North has shown itself to be more reasonable here: Its capital has been Pyongyang rather than Seoul since 1972. Is there another way of locking down the outcome of the war without a peace treaty? Yes, but it is no less complicated, because the Korean War would have to be acknowledged as a civil war that was internationalized only when foreign forces entered it, first on one side and then the other.

Then a peace treaty between the two countries would make no sense because the issue would concern two governments in one country. However, that solution would demand at least as much political will from Pyongyang and Seoul because it would imply that both sides did not win (more precisely, both sides consider themselves the victor), but rather that both sides lost. So, as we s sum things up, we should note that North Korea’s proposal for a peace treaty deserves consideration, if only because the 1953 Armistice Agreement does not meet the needs of the times and ceased to be in force — in 2013 if not in 1957. To lock down the outcome of the war, draw a line and across the last “t” during the 60th anniversary year of the war’s end would be a landmark moment. We need to remember, however, that there are a number of procedural issues involved in signing a peace treaty. Superimposed on the situation is the distrust between the two countries, which means any initiative by the opposing side will be tested for validity. Nevertheless, if the parties are able to take this important step forward, the shadow of the Korean War will gradually began to fade.

Konstantin Asmolov, Cand. Sc. (History), is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies. Exclusively for New Eastern Outlook. Popular Articles Panmunjom Borderline Absurdity A Fun-Filled Tour of the Korean DMZ By Kevin Sullivan Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, January 11, 1998; The trick is to keep a poker face: no blinking, no smiling, no flashing a quick obscene gesture, no going cross-eyed to see if you can crack his stone-cold stare. It's tempting to goof on the North Korean soldier whose face is six inches from yours. It's a juvenile temptation, admittedly, much like getting the giggles at a serious moment in church. But the whole thing just seems so silly -- this 25-year-old North Korean soldier in his olive drab uniform trying to intimidate a bunch of tourists with cameras and fanny packs -- that it's easy to forget that this is anything but funny.

Panmunjom is the "truce village" that straddles the border between North Korea and South Korea in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone that has split this peninsula since the Korean War ended in 1953. The DMZ is probably the most fortified border on Earth, with more than a million soldiers facing each other with enough artillery to obliterate each other in a matter of hours. Tension constantly runs high here -- more than 50 Americans, 1,000 South Koreans and countless North Koreans have died in skirmishes along the DMZ in the past 40 years, including one recently. The DMZ is dotted with land mines and razor wire and concrete tank bunkers and Communist soldiers dug into mountainsides behind cast-iron "blast doors" to protect them against bombs dropped from American B-52s. It's one bad place, but it's also a huge tourist draw. Every year, about 180,000 tourists are bused up from Seoul, 30 miles to the south, to spend a day in the clean air and wide open spaces of the last flashpoint of the Cold War.

Think of it as Dangerland, a bizarre theme park to cataclysmic mass death. I'm not sure I'd recommend the DMZ as a holiday destination in itself. But for anyone who plans to be in South Korea on business or vacation anyway, this place is not to be missed -- it's one of the weirdest and most fascinating places you can reach in a tour bus. You know you're not in Disneyland right away, when you are asked to sign a release that notes that your trip to Panmunjom "will entail entry into a hostile area and possibility of injury or death as a direct result of enemy action." The release also bans speaking or associating with the North Korean soldiers, as well as pointing or making gestures or expressions that the North Koreans might twist into propaganda. Easier said than done. On one of my visits to the DMZ, I stood against the glass looking back at one of the North Koreans, trying not to laugh, when a South Korean woman on the same tour broke into tears and ran behind one of the U.N. soldiers for protection. South Koreans have been living with the very real danger of another North Korean invasion for a generation.

To this woman, seeing the North Korean soldiers up close was like meeting the Devil. Which brings us back to the staring contest with the evil-eyed North Korean soldier. One of the main attractions in Panmunjom is a visit to the powder-blue, one-story building where officials from the two sides meet occasionally. A conference table covered with green velvet is placed directly over the border line, and the microphone cable that runs down the middle of the table is officially recognized as the international border. When tourists are ushered into the building, four soldiers from the U.S.-led U.N. Command, the good guys, stand at either end of the building at rigid attention, fists and jaws clenched, guarding the day-trippers. And like flies to a picnic, North Korean soldiers wander up to the windows and peer in, inches from the tourists.

Some of the soldiers smile and wave, others take pictures, but most just press their faces near the glass and scowl with a look that says, "You are a pathetic capitalist pig, and I would like to rip your lungs out." But North Korea is a nation in crisis, where millions of people are threatened with starvation because of a dying economy and severe food shortages, so my guess is that these guys are really thinking something like, "Man, look at those fat tourists." Tourists are warned not to make eye contact or gestures of any kind. If a tourist waved, a North Korean soldier might take a photo that could easily end up in a Stalinist propaganda publication with a caption like, "Defector begs a glorious patriot from the Korean People's Army to save him from Imperialist oppression." Nobody takes this too seriously, but it's still against the rules to wave. As soon as your tour bus leaves Seoul, you start to get the idea that things are a little different here. "Freedom Road," the only way to Panmunjom, is a major divided highway that is about 12 lanes across in some places. The median strip is massive and flat, just right for a wave of tanks and artillery to head north to repel an invasion.

Those odd little structures up in almost every hill? Yup, those are machine gun emplacements. And so are those piles of sandbags in the median strip. The road stretches along the banks of the Imjin River, which is lined with one continuous eight-foot fence covered with razor wire and dotted with hundreds of military watch posts, all manned by a solitary soldier. The river itself is filled with nets and spikes and other obstacles to prevent North Korean soldiers or vessels from coming south. Huge lighted signs bearing Korean letters face the North Korean side of the river, touting "Freedom" and "Democracy." At Imjingak, the last village before the DMZ, buses line up next to a large display of tanks and planes and other equipment used in the Korean War. The buses must wait for permission to pass over a one-lane bridge, the only way to Panmunjom. Soldiers inspect the bus, and clear it to drive the last couple of miles to the DMZ. Along the way, the bus passes under several concrete structures that appear to have no purpose. These are tank traps, which can be collapsed with dynamite to prevent enemy tanks from rumbling south.

First stop is Camp Bonifas, a small collection of buildings surrounded by triple coils of razor wire just 440 yards south of the DMZ. If it weren't for the land mines and armed soldiers, the place might look like a big Boy Scout camp. About 500 U.S. and South Korean soldiers live in Bonifas and other bases close to Panmunjom. They are the closest soldiers to North Korea, and they are on constant alert for a North Korean invasion. When the tour buses arrive at the gate, a soldier comes aboard, salutes and barks out the motto of the soldiers stationed here, "In front of them all." From that point on, tourists in the DMZ are under constant guard by U.N. soldiers. They keep tourists from straying out of authorized areas, but mainly they are there to protect the visitors from enemy attack. They also make sure tourists take pictures only at authorized spots, as almost all photography here is banned. All tourists are required to sit through a slide show about the DMZ, which recounts some of the historical highlights, such as the 1976 deaths of two U.S. soldiers (including the camp's namesake, Maj. Arthur G.

Bonifas) who were hacked to death by ax-wielding North Korean soldiers as the Americans tried to trim a tree in the DMZ. Camp Bonifas has a tiny one-hole golf course with a peeling Astroturf green, surrounded on three sides by minefields. Sports Illustrated magazine visited a few years ago and dubbed it "the most dangerous hole in golf." Indeed, at least one errant shot exploded a land mine. All tours to the DMZ include a stop at the Monastery, the Camp Bonifas canteen, which has a sign calling it the "Home of the Merry Mad Monks of the DMZ." It's a small, dark building where tourists can buy DMZ baseball caps and coffee mugs and Snickers bars for 50 cents. There are basketball and tennis courts across the streets, but I've never seen anyone using them on several visits there. It's not a tennis kind of place. Almost all the tourists who come up here are foreigners because South Koreans need a special government permit to visit Panmunjom. Many of the visitors are Americans, including some who fought in the Korean War, their families, history buffs or just backpackers trekking around Asia looking for a little counterintuitive tourism.

A trip to the DMZ jerks the visitor wildly between cold moments of absolute deadly seriousness and memorable instances of pure goofiness. At the center of Panmunjom, visitors can look across at North Korean tourists gawking at them from a large visitors center on the North's side and North Korean sentries staring back at them through binoculars. It's serious and quiet here, with soldiers everywhere warning tourists against making any sudden or provocative movements. It's the same way when the bus stops at several other military checkpoints where tourists can gaze out across the rocky hills of North Korea. Checkpoint 3 is the tour's most famous stop. This is where U.S. presidents and secretaries of defense stand when they want to have an up-close look at North Korea. Set up on a hill, it seems almost too peaceful to be so dangerous. It's an odd feeling to stand here and be watched by the North Koreans in their guard towers just a hundred yards away. And it's even odder to look out and know that dug into those harmless-looking hills are enough soldiers and artillery to wage a war of unthinkable bloodiness. Inside this eerie buffer zone, there are still rusting military helmets from the Korean War with dandelions growing through the bullet holes.

But this isn't like visiting Vietnam, where the war has become a thing of museums and history books. Here in Korea, the war did not end when the shooting stopped in 1953. A cease-fire, not a peace treaty, is in force. The war may be only technically still on, but soldiers here remain on the highest kind of alert. The view from Checkpoint 3 illustrates something else that seems a little odd here. The green hills and vast expanses of the DMZ are filled with rare birds and more than 140 varieties of wildlife. Because the 2 1/2-mile-wide DMZ has hardly been touched by humans in almost 50 years, it has become one of Asia's great wildlife sanctuaries. There are two heavily guarded villages in the DMZ, one in the north and one in the south, which face each other across the minefields. They are visible to tourists, but off-limits for visits. The southern village, Taesongdong, is home to 237 farmers; life is dangerous, but they don't have to pay taxes and they get great prices for their novel produce.

The northern village, Kijongdong, looks modern enough, but if you squint through your binoculars, you'll see that the buildings don't even have glass in the windows. It's a lie, a huge Potemkin village designed to give North Korea the appearance of modernity. Back at Camp Bonifas, visitors are welcome to have lunch in Ballinger Hall, the camp cafeteria, which serves up a fine hamburger and fries on tables arranged on a disco-dance floor, in the finest tradition of military bases everywhere. Except for the possibility of immediate annihilation in a shower of artillery fire, it's a perfectly pleasant way to cap the day. Almost any major hotel in Seoul offers daily bus tours to Panmunjom. Cost is about $53 and the tour takes about half a day. � Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company Panmunjom Cease Fire Agreement Final Phase of the Korean War The Panmunjom cease-fire agreement was signed on July 27, 1953. North Koreans celebrate the 27th day of July every year as the victory day. However, they were not the real winners. The winners are the American negotiators against their communist counterparts.

The other important winner was Dr. Syngman Rhee, the president of (south) Korea, against the Eisenhower administration of the United States. Thanks to those winners, (south) Korea now is one of the most prosperous countries in the world, and is the most important ally of the United States in the Pacific area. Please read the following articles carefully. Rhee releases Prisoners of War. written (2005.4.21) coverted to webpage (2013.7.21) Eisenhower came to Korea in January of 1963 two weeks before his inauguration. He told Rhee stopping the war was a better alternative than continuing the costly war. Dr. Rhee was not impressed. Let us summarize what Americans wanted and what Koreans did not want during the Panmunjom cease-fire talks (1951-53). In 1953, the most pressing issue for the Eisenhower administration was to stop the war in Korea and bring American boys home. However, Koreans did not want an inconclusive end of the war with the country divided. Rhee knew that he could not stop the cease-fire process.

The best he could get from Eisenhower was a mutual military treaty which will commit the United States to the security guarantee of Korea. His position was that American troops could go home once the United States signed a paper guaranteeing the security of Korea. From the American point of view, it is unthinkable to have a formal treaty with an inferior country like Korea. On the other hand, Eisenhower's Republican administration had enough hard-liners against the communist expansion in Asia. Thus, Rhee's insistence started gaining support among those hard-line anti-communist politicians. Dr. Rhee liked this man. On June 25, 1953, at a public meeting, President Rhee introduced Gen. Paik Sun-Yup as the man who would occupy Pyongyang again. He pledged to continue fighting, while Americans were getting ready to sign the cease-fire agreement. He sounded crazy to Americans, but they could not ignore him. As for Gen. Paik, he was the commander of the First Division of the Korean army in 1950. In October of 1950, he led his Division to enter his home-town city of Pyongyang. Click here for a very interesting story.

Korea's mutual defense treaty with the United States being signed in Seoul (September 1953). This was one of the biggest and sweetest packages Rhee obtained from the United States. In order to make his point known to Americans, Rhee ordered Korean students to stage anti-cease-fire demonstrations throughout the country. This produced no effects on Americans. On June 25 of 1953 (one month before the cease fire), there was a public meeting in Busan (capital city at that time) marking the third anniversary of the 6.25 day. President Rhee said there that Koreans would march northward after Americans left the country. He introduced General Paik Sun-Yup to the crowd as the man (yi-saram) who first reached Pyongyang (before Americans) with his Korean troops in October of 1950. Still, the Eisenhower administration was silent about the mutual defense treaty. As a last resort, two weeks before the scheduled cease-fire day of July 27, Rhee ordered his Korean POW guards to release all anti-communist North Korean prisoners of war. There were approximately 120,000 POWs.

About one half of them were anti-communists and were refusing to go back to the North. They had been separated from the die-hard communists and were kept in minimum security camps near Busan. It was an easy job for the Korean guards to let them go. About 28,000 POWs were released. Those POW guards relayed Rhee's message to them. "I am your president. You are now free in your country." Since Americans and the Communists had worked out an elaborate procedure for handling those POWs during the cease-fire talks, Rhee's action created a great shock to them. The Communists were accusing Americans of violating the agreement. As a consequence, the Eisenhower administration had to send a special envoy to to Busan (capital city of Korea at that time) to find out what Rhee really wanted. Rhee set out three conditions: to double the size of the Korean army equipped with U.S. arms, financial commitment to construct an industrial base, a written security guarantee in the form of mutual defense treaty. Americans accepted Rhee's terms and Rhee's promise not to jeopardize the cease-fire process. The cease-fire was signed on July 27, 1953.

Rhee's Korean government did not participate in the process and did not sign the cease-fire documents. In the South, the cease-fire was a national disgrace. Click here for the NLL issue. Korean money looked like this in 1953. Korea's economy is infinitely stronger now. In 1953, the population of Busan was about one million. The addition of 28,000 more Koreans meant a substantial population shift. Yet, Koreans in Busan did not complain, and those "new" citizens were accommodated comfortably in private houses. They were given jobs. Korean girls did not mind marrying them. We all say that Korea is much stronger country now because of its industrial production. On the other hand, I would say Korea is much weaker country. Why? There are now more than ten million people in Seoul. There is a possibility of 28,000 North Korean refugees coming to Seoul in one day. The city of Seoul has more than enough economic power to accommodate them. But, do the citizens of Seoul have enough hearts and minds to absorb them?

Cease Fire Agreement of July 27, 1953 written (2005.5.17) webapged (2013.7.16) American and North Korean soldiers are exchanging fun talks while tedious negotiations are taking place inside the conference hall, during the Panmunjom cease-fire talks. The B-29 bomber (small) with four propellers and the B-36 bomber with six propellers. Horace Underwood was the first American missionary in Korea. He had his villa at the Kumipo beach near Sorae on the southern coast of Hwanghae Province. As I said many times before, I spent the first eleven years my life there. What is so special about this place? Click here for the early history of Korean Christianity. From the Island of Baeknyun, you can see Sorae's mountains. The North Korean side wanted this island for their fishing purposes, but it was occupied by Korean marines at that time. The island was the South's intelligence base during the war. Americans, tired of negotiations, were ready to give up this island, but two of the Underwood grandsons intervened. Horace Underwood had a son known to Koreans as Dr.

Won Han-Kyung who devoted his entire life to Yonsei University. He had four sons. The eldest son was Horace III (known as Won Il-Han), and the youngest son is Richard. These two sons spoke Korean fluently and worked as interpreters during the cease-fire negotiations. These Underwood brothers wanted to keep the Baeknyun Island on our side. The reason was simple. They could see their house in Kumipo from this island. Their logic was even correct. The cease-fire line was agreed to be the combat line. The Baeknyun Island was under our military control. The Underwood brothers persuaded the chief American negotiator and thus General Mark Clark (the commander of the U.N. Forces) not to give up the island. They presented this map. This then was the American position. The cease-fire was signed on July 27 without an agreement on the line on the West Sea. From our point of view, there were no problems at that time. Americans maintained an absolute naval superiority over North Korea's bath-tub navy. Even on this issue, Americans had their way.

These days, we hear often about naval confrontations in that area, and North Koreans say different things about the cease-fire line in the sea. I am giving my final exam to students today (2005.5.17), and I will be making frequent conference trips during the summer. While attending a conference in Sweden next month, I will be making an excursion to a Russian city of Kaliningrad. This city used to be a German city called Koenigsburg before 1945. I am going there because I have a great respect for a philosopher named Immanuel Kant who spent his entire life there. After Stalin took over that place in 1945, as he did to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, he kicked out all Germans and sent Russians into that city. I am curious about how effective Stalin was in his human engineering. Stalin was interested in moving Koreans to Kazkhstan and Uzbechistan, and sending Russians into the Korean peninsula. Rhee Seungman and Kim Il-Sung, though sworn enemies, prevented this disaster. I have many other stories to tell. I would love to talk about the following items. Please come again.

Who is responsible for starting the Panmunjom cease-fire talk? When and how did the cease-fire talk begin? Who really won in the talks. Many other questions. I feel I have to clarify these issues before I die, because I am the only one who could answer some of the above questions. copyright@2013 by Y. S. Kim. Unless otherwise specified, all photos are from the public domain, the Wikipedia fair-use domain, the North Korean propaganda literature, or from my personal collection.

Question: Which war ended with the treaty of Panmunjom?
Answer: Korean War