Commentary: 50 Years of Korean Armistice Agreement

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, July 27, 2003

Commentary: 50 Years of Korean Armistice Agreement

Fifty years have elapsed since the Korean Armistice Agreement (KAA) was signed on July 27, 1953. But now the peace process on the Korean Peninsula has encountered a major obstacle: the nuclear issue.

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Fifty years have elapsed since the Korean Armistice Agreement (KAA) was signed on July 27, 1953. But now the peace process on the Korean Peninsula has encountered a major obstacle: the nuclear issue.

The matter has also become one of grave concerns of the international community. A peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue will surely contribute to the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula as it is in the interests of the related parties.

Fifty years ago, the representatives of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and China and the US-led forces signed the document, declaring the end of the three-year-long Korean War and resuming peace on the Korean Peninsula.

The KAA has made its historic contributions to the peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. The agreement has prevented a new war from breaking out on the peninsula and maintained the structure of truce. It has also served to guarantee peace construction in both South Korea and the DPRK and keep the stability of the region.

Since the end of the Korean War, the Korean Peninsula has been enveloped in the clouds of the cold war and under the impact of the turbulent post-cold war world. The military confrontation and precautions against each other between the DPRK and the US-South Korean side have been going on. Millions of landmines have been laid along the 246-kilometer military border, and 1.26 million accusations concerning breaching the KAA have been leveled by the DPRK and South Korea. Such an unstable situation has retarded the peace process on the peninsula, and made both sides pay heavy prices for it.

The KAA maintained a 50-year mechanism of truce on the peninsula. But the mechanism is now facing challenges. In 1994, the military armistice commission, which was set up under the armistice agreement, became invalid due to diverges, and the neutral nations supervisory commission was dismissed. Now, the DPRK-US general-level dialogue mechanism has actually replaced theroles and functions of the military armistice commission. As a four-party dialogue, involving South Korea, the DPRK, the United States and China, hasn't changed the mechanism of truce into a mechanism of peace, all the parties concerned are facing a task of maintaining the truce mechanism and seeking to build up a permanent peace mechanism.

After painful experiences of long-term confrontation, South Korea and the DPRK began to seek peaceful settlement to their disputes through consultation. The South-North Joint Statement issued in 1972, the Accord on Reconciliation, Mutual Non-Aggression and Cooperation signed in late 1991 and the South-NorthJoint Communique signed in 2000 set up dialogue, cooperation, peace and peaceful unification as the basic principles for resolving disputes. They laid the foundation for the reconciliation and peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Through joint efforts, the two sides gained the time for construction and got benefits from dialogue and cooperation.

In recent years, new steps were taken on inter-Korea military cooperation and the contiguity along the military demarcation line,under the precondition of safeguarding the truce. Talks were held by defense ministers of the two sides and direct phone lines were set up between the two military authorities. The occurrence of military confrontation along the military demarcation line reduced substantially, despite conflicts once in a while. In November 1998,Mountain Kumgang, located near the Demilitarized Zone on the East Coast, began to open to South Korean tourists, marking a major breakthrough in inter-Korean relations. As a symbol of reconciliation, South Korea and the DPRK last month symbolically re-linked two railways across their heavily armed border and started construction for an industrial park near the DPRK's border town of Kaesong.

Now the international community is deeply concerned over the nuclear issue of the DPRK. Any confrontation that may be caused by the issue will surely damage the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. The world calls for a peaceful settlement.

Fifty years ago, the armistice agreement was achieved through negotiations and 50 years later, all the parties concerned should also be able to resolve their disputes on the nuclear issue through dialogue.

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