Peace & Freedom: 2023 Fall/Winner issue

Seventy Years Is Enough
End the Korean War!
By Gwyn Kirk
Thousands of people marched and rallied in Seoul on July 22, 2023,
to mark the 70th anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement.
Photo credit: Korea Peace Action.
July 27, 2023, marked the 70 th anniversary of the ceasefire
signed by the United States and North Korea to halt
the Korean War (1950-53). This Armistice Agreement
defined the DMZ as the border between North and
South Korea and called for the governments involved to start
negotiating a peace treaty within three months. Seventy years
later, this has still not happened. Instead, ongoing hostilities,
provocations, mixed messages, mutual demonization, broken
commitments, and lack of trust have justified the military
build-up on both sides of the DMZ. Also, South Korea, Japan,
and the United States are involved in a spiraling arms race
with Russia and China.
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom,
including the US section, opposed the Korean War from the
beginning, and worked hard for a ceasefire through “its UN
consultants in New York and Geneva, its international officers,
and its national sections.” 1 Since then, the Korean War has
often been called the “forgotten war” in the United States.
We need to recall the role of successive United States administrations
in the tangled history that has produced this current
dangerous stalemate, and put pressure on our government
to change its military policies.
Twentieth-Century History of Korea
Korea was under Japanese imperial rule from 1910 till 1945.
Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II was a moment of
liberation for Koreans who had many ideas for the future of
their country. But immediately the Cold War powers — the
US and the Soviet Union — divided the peninsula at the 38th
parallel, which led to the creation of two states: the Republic
of Korea (ROK) in the south and the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north. After superpower
negotiations failed to reunite the country, military tensions
escalated into all-out war, a dreadful slaughter during which
about 4 million people died, mostly Korean civilians. The war
ended with an Armistice Agreement but no peace treaty, so
each side fears that fighting could resume at any time.
The United States did not leave South Korea after the war.
It has maintained major army and air force bases there, and
conducts regular military drills along the DMZ that date back
to 1976. The maneuvers in March this year, code named
“Freedom Shield 23,” involved amphibious landings and
combined air drills in order to practice coordination between
US and ROK forces, as well as to demonstrate US “extended
deterrence” against North Korean threats. 2 The port call to
Busan of the USS Michigan, a nuclear-armed submarine,
provided another show of force in July 2023, as US and ROK
officials began talks to coordinate their responses in the event
of nuclear war with the DPRK. 3
Given this history, for decades North Korea has considered
the United States an enemy due to its highly provocative
military maneuvers and past failures to honor agreements.
North Korea correctly sees itself as outgunned by the US-ROK
alliance across the DMZ. Its northern neighbors, Russia and
China, are nuclear powers, and Japan is doubling its military
budget. The DPRK relies on its nuclear arsenal to compensate
for its lack of conventional weaponry in relation to these
states. All but China have first-use nuclear policies.
Korean Peninsula showing the 38th parallel; note Pyongyang and
Seoul are only 160 miles apart. Source: www.teara.govt.nz
2 | PEACE & FREEDOM FALL/WINTER 2023