The Korean Armistice Agreement (Korean: 한국정전협정; Hanja: 韓國停戰協定) is an armistice that brought about a cessation of hostilities of the Korean War. It was signed by United States Army Lieutenant General William Harrison Jr. and General Mark W. Clark representing the United Nations Command (UNC), North Korea leader Kim Il Sung and General Nam Il representing the Korean People's Army (KPA), and Peng Dehuai representing the Chinese People's Volunteer Army (PVA). The armistice was signed on 27 July 1953, and came into force at 22:00 local time (UTC+09:00) the same day and was designed to "ensure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved."
During the 1954 Geneva Conference in Switzerland, Chinese Premier and foreign minister Zhou Enlai suggested that a peace treaty should be implemented on the Korean peninsula. However, the US secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, did not accommodate this attempt to achieve such a treaty. A final peace settlement has never been achieved. The signed armistice established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the de facto new border between the two nations, put into force a ceasefire, and finalized repatriation of prisoners of war. The DMZ runs close to the 38th parallel and has separated North and South Korea since the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953.
South Korea never signed the Armistice Agreement, due to President Syngman Rhee's refusal to accept having failed to unify Korea by force. China normalized relations and signed a peace treaty with South Korea in 1992. In 1994, China withdrew from the Military Armistice Commission, essentially leaving North Korea and the UN Command as the only participants in the armistice agreement. In 2011, South Korea stated that North Korea had violated the armistice 221 times.
Background
By mid-December 1950, the United States was discussing terms for an agreement to end the Korean War. The desired agreement would end the fighting, provide assurances against its resumption, and protect the future security of UNC forces. The United States asked for a military armistice commission of mixed membership that would supervise all agreements. Both sides would need to agree to "cease the introduction into Korea of any reinforcing air, ground or naval units or personnel... and to refrain from increasing the level of war equipment and material existing in Korea." The U.S. wished to create a demilitarized zone that would be roughly 20 miles (32 km) wide. The proposed agreement would also address the issue of prisoners of war which the U.S. believed should be exchanged on a one-for-one basis.
While talk of a possible armistice agreement was circulating, in late May and early June 1951, the President of the Republic of Korea (ROK, South Korea) Syngman Rhee opposed peace talks. He believed the ROK should continue to expand its army in order to march all the way to the Yalu River and completely unify the nation. The UNC did not endorse Rhee's position. Even without UNC support, Rhee and the South Korean government attempted to mobilize the public to resist any halt in the fighting short of the Yalu River. Other ROK officials supported Rhee's ambitions and the National Assembly of South Korea unanimously passed a resolution endorsing a continued fight for an "independent and unified country." At the end of June, however, the Assembly decided to support armistice talks, although President Rhee continued to oppose them.
Like Syngman Rhee, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung also sought complete unification. The North Korean side was slow to support armistice talks and only on 27 June 1951 – seventeen days after armistice talks had begun – it did change its slogan of "drive the enemy into the sea" to "drive the enemy to the 38th parallel." North Korea was pressured to support armistice talks by its allies the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, whose support was vital to enabling North Korea to continue fighting.
Negotiations
Talks concerning an armistice started 10 July 1951, in Kaesong, a North Korean city in North Hwanghae Province, near the South Korean border. The two primary negotiators were Chief of Army Staff General Nam Il, a North Korean deputy premier, and United States Vice Admiral Charles Turner Joy. After a period of two weeks, on 26 July 1951, a five-part agenda was agreed upon, which guided talks until the signing of the armistice on 27 July 1953. The items to be discussed were:
- Adoption of an agenda.
- Fixing a military demarcation line between the two sides to establish a demilitarized zone as a basic condition for the cessation of hostilities in Korea.
- Concrete arrangements for realization of a ceasefire and armistice in Korea, including the composition, authority, and functions of a supervisory organization to carry out the terms of a truce and armistice.
- Arrangements relating to prisoners-of-war.
- Recommendations to the governments of the countries concerned on both sides.
After the agenda was decided, talks proceeded slowly. There were lengthy intervals between meetings. The longest gap between discussions started on 23 August 1951, when North Korea and its allies claimed that the conference site in Kaesong had been bombed. North Korea requested for the UNC to conduct an immediate investigation, which concluded that there was evidence a UNC aircraft had attacked the conference site. The evidence, however, appeared to be manufactured. The communists subsequently refused to permit an investigation during daylight hours. Armistice talks did not start again until 25 October 1951. The US would not allow further discussion to take place in Kaesong. Panmunjom, a nearby village in Kyonggi Province, close to both Koreas, was chosen as the new location for deliberations. That was conditional on responsibility for protection of the village being shared by both powers.
A major, problematic negotiation point was the repatriation of prisoners-of-war. The Communists held 10,000, and the UNC held 150,000. The PVA, KPA, and UNC could not agree on a system of repatriation because many PVA and KPA soldiers refused to be repatriated to the north, which was unacceptable to the Chinese and North Koreans. In the final armistice agreement, signed on 27 July 1953, a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, chaired by Indian General K. S. Thimayya, was set up to handle the matter.
In 1952, the United States elected a new president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. On 2 December 1952, he went to Korea to investigate what might end the war. Kenneth Nichols wrote that President Eisenhower "ended the Korean hostilities by discreetly threatening to use atomic weapons if the North Koreans and the Chinese did not agree to a cessation of hostilities". With the UN accepting India's proposed NNPC POW exchange framework, the KPA, PVA, and UNC ceased fire with the battle line approximately at the Kansas Line, a line of UN positions north of the 38th parallel, which had been established in Operation Rugged. Upon agreeing to the armistice, the belligerents established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which has since been patrolled by KPA, ROKA, United States, and Joint UNC forces. Discussions continued slowly because of difficulties regarding demarcation of the border between North and South Korea. China and North Korea expected the line to remain at the 38th parallel. Within weeks, however, both nations accepted the Kansas Line. In March 1953, the death of Joseph Stalin helped spur negotiations. While the Chinese leader Mao Zedong was not then willing to compromise, the new Soviet leadership issued a statement two weeks after Stalin's death, which called for a quick end to hostilities.
On 19 July 1953, the delegates reached agreement covering all issues on the agenda. On 27 July 1953, at 10:00 a.m., the Armistice was signed by Nam Il, a delegate of the KPA and PVA, and William K. Harrison Jr., a UNC delegate. Twelve hours after the signing of the document, all regulations that were approved in the armistice went into effect. The agreement provided for monitoring by an international commission. The Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) was established to prevent reinforcements being brought into Korea, whether additional military personnel or new weapons, and NNSC member inspection teams from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland operated throughout Korea.
Terms
A key feature of the armistice is that no nation is a signatory to the agreement; it is purely a military document. The signed Armistice established a "complete cessation of all hostilities in Korea by all armed forces", which was to be enforced by the commanders of both sides. The armistice is, however, only a ceasefire between military forces, rather than an agreement between governments to normalize relations. No formal peace treaty was signed, and normalized relations were not restored. The armistice established the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) and the DMZ. The DMZ was agreed as a 2.5-mile -wide (4.0 km) fortified buffer zone between the two Korean nations. The DMZ follows the Kansas Line, where the two sides actually confronted each other at the time of the signing of the Armistice. The DMZ is currently the most heavily defended national border in the world as of 2018.
The Armistice also established regulations regarding prisoners-of-war. The agreement stated:
Within sixty (60) days after this agreement becomes effective each side shall, without offering any hindrance, directly repatriate and hand over in groups all those prisoners of war in its custody who insist on repatriation to the side to which they belonged at the time of capture.
Ultimately, more than 22,000 KPA or PVA soldiers refused repatriation. On the opposite side, only 327 South Korean soldiers, 21 American soldiers, and 1 British soldier also refused repatriation and remained in North Korea or in China. (See list of American and British defectors in the Korean War.)
With the signing of the Armistice, the war ended. Despite the three-year war, the international border remained at a similar location as from before the war.
Subsequent events
Failure of the Geneva Conference
Article IV (Paragraph 60) of the Armistice Agreement calls for a political conference to be held within three months of the signing of the agreement in order "to ensure the peaceful settlement of the Korean question." A conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland in April 1954, missing the three month timeline by six months. The conference focused on two separate conflicts: the conflict in Korea; and the conflict in Indochina. Participants in the talks on the conflict in Korea were the US, the USSR, France, China, and North and South Korea. The peace agreement on the Korean peninsula was officially raised at the conference, by Chinese diplomat Zhou Enlai with the US Secretary of Defense, John Foster Dulles, but no progress was made. The United States intentionally avoided discussing the "Peace Treaty on the Korean Peninsula," in spite of criticism from the other representatives at the conference about the negative attitude of the United States.
United States violation of paragraph 13d
Paragraph 13d of the Armistice Agreement mandated that neither side introduce new weapons into Korea, other than piece-for-piece replacement of equipment. In September 1956 the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Radford indicated that the U.S. military intention was to introduce atomic weapons into Korea, which was agreed to by the U.S. National Security Council and President Eisenhower. Due to an increase in the number of jet fighters (500, up from 0) and jet-ready airfields (25, up from 0) in North Korea, as well as stalled or slow-walked inspections from third party inspection teams the U.S. unilaterally abrogated paragraph 13d, breaking the Armistice Agreement, despite concerns by United Nations allies. At a meeting of the Military Armistice Commission on 21 June 1957, the U.S. informed the North Korean representatives that the United Nations Command no longer considered itself bound by paragraph 13d of the armistice. In January 1958 nuclear armed Honest John missiles and 280mm atomic cannons were deployed to South Korea, followed within a year by atomic demolition munitions and nuclear armed Matador cruise missiles with the range to reach China and the Soviet Union. North Korea believed the U.S. had introduced new weapons earlier, citing NNSC inspection team reports for August 1953 to April 1954. The U.S. believed that North Korea had introduced new weapons contrary to 13d, but did not make specific allegations.
Following the abrogation of paragraph 13d, the NNSC largely lost its function, and became primarily office based in the DMZ with a small staff. North Korea denounced the abrogation of paragraph 13d. North Korea responded militarily by digging massive underground fortifications resistant to nuclear attack, and by the forward deployment of its conventional forces so that the use of nuclear weapons against it would endanger South Korean and U.S. forces as well. In 1963 North Korea asked the Soviet Union and China for help in developing nuclear weapons, but was refused.
United Nations statements
In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly adopted resolutions endorsing the desirability of replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace treaty and dissolving the UNC. This was followed by North Korean attempts to start peace discussions with the U.S. The U.S. however believed influencing China to restrict North Korean actions would be more effective.