The Road To Peace
The Korean War broke out in 1950 and lasted until 1953. While hostilities ended, only an Armistice Agreement was signed on July 27, 1953, so the Republic of Korea (ROK) and North Korea are still in a state of war, technically speaking. Since the signing of the Armistice Agreement, feeble attempts have been made toward true peace, but thanks to recent events of significance, 2018 may yet prove to be the pivotal year to finally achieving this.
2018 PyeongChang olymPiCs
The XXIII Olympic Winter Games and XII Winter Paralympic Games were respectively held in February and March in the host city of PyeongChang, ROK. The games were dubbed as the “Peace Olympics” because, for the first time, athletes from the ROK and North Korea marched together behind a blue-andwhite “unification” flag. It was the first positive sign that peace between the two Koreas could actually be in sight.
Hope was further bolstered by the attendance of a high-level North Korean delegation, including North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo-jong.
aPril 2018 inter-Korean summit
On April 27, 2018, the historic Panmunjeom Declaration for
Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula was signed by ROK President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Chairman Kim Jong-un.
They announced their commitment to the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula and to try to officially end the Korean War by signing a peace treaty. The two leaders also agreed to urgently resolve humanitarian issues of families separated by the division of the Korean Peninsula, to work together to ease military tension on the Korean Peninsula, and to establish an inter-Korean joint liaison office in Kaesong, North Korea.
may 2018 inter-Korean summit
A month after the first summit, President Moon and Chairman Kim again met in Panmunjeom, this time on the North Korean side of the Joint Security Area along the military demarcation line. Although the meeting was not publicly announced beforehand, they managed to get the United States-North Korea Summit back on track after President Trump, responding to North Korea’s provocative statement, threatened to pull out of it.
The summit led to high-level talks on June 1, where officials from the two Koreas laid the groundwork for the reunion of separated families.
us-north Korea summit
The first-ever meeting between leaders of the US and North Korea eventually pushed through as planned on June 12. President Trump and Chairman Kim signed a joint statement that called for establishing new US-North Korea relations, building a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, upholding the Panmunjeom Declaration of April between the two Koreas, and recovering the remains of US prisoners-of-war and missed-in-actions.
While North Korea has returned the remains of US service members who died during the Korean War, relations have gone cold again because North Korea has argued for unilateral lifting of sanctions against North Korea imposed by the international community, while it has not taken any substantive measures to get rid of its nuclear weapons and programs, the root cause of the sanctions.
reunions of seParated families
On August 20 and 26, scores of North and South Koreans divided by the Korean War more than six decades ago met face-to-face. As tensions between the ROK and North Korea eased to some degrees following the series of high-level inter-Korean and US discussions, the separated families held reunions at the tourist resort of Mount Kumgang in the North.
sePtemBer 2018 inter-Korean summit
President Moon and Chairman Kim met again last September 18-20, this time in Pyongyang, where they seriously
discussed the implementation of the Panmunjeom Declaration.
* * * With the signing of the Panmunjeom
Declaration in April, the world’s anxiety over the tension between the US and North Korea, as well as in the Korean Peninsula, has reasonably eased. Ensuing events demonstrated a clear mounting effort, especially on the part of the two Korean leaders, to stabilize the situation and achieve genuine peace. In this, the Republic of Korea is grateful to its allies like the Philippines, which has consistently supported all Korean peace initiatives.