Can Trump, Kim end Korean tensions?

SINGAPORE — Long a dream of Koreans on both sides of the world’s most heavily armed border, a peace treaty that finally ends the 68-year-old Korean War is now being hinted at by President Donald Trump ahead of his summit Tuesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Complete North Korean denuclearization will likely take much more than a single summit, but Trump may see a peace deal as a quick, painless path to a Nobel Peace Prize. Kim is pursuing a North Korean demand for a treaty that may be aimed at getting U.S. troops off the Korean Peninsula.

A look at what peace to one of the 20th century’s bloodiest wars might mean:

Wait, the Korean War is still going on?

It’s a technicality, but yes. The Japanese-controlled Korean Peninsula was divided in 1945, at the end of World War II, into a Soviet-backed north and a U.S.-backed south. Three years later North and South Korea became sovereign nations, and two years after that, on June 25, 1950, the North sneak-attacked its southern rival, looking to unify the peninsula by force.

Three years of bloodshed ended on July 27, 1953, but the war technically continues today because instead of a peace treaty, military officers for the U.S.-led United Nations, North Korea and China signed an armistice that halted the fighting. Although then-South Korean President Syngman Rhee, who wanted to fight on until the North was crushed, refused to sign the armistice, it still took effect.

Will they do it?

Trump seems to want to. “We talked about ending the war,” Trump said at the White House after his meeting earlier this month with senior North Korean envoy Kim Yong Chol.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in shook off a suggestion in May that he receive the credit for reducing tensions with North Korea, saying Trump “can take the Nobel Prize” as long as the Koreas receive peace in return.

Kim Jong Un’s motivation for a treaty may be, in part, linked to eventually getting U.S. troops — 28,500 of them — out of the southern part of the peninsula; many believe that the North sees this as the first step in paving the way for a single Korea ruled by Pyongyang.

What’s stopping them?

In short, there might not be enough leaders in Singapore.

Trump and Kim could announce an agreement on a peace treaty, something that was mentioned in a then-landmark 2005 nuclear deal that later fell apart. But nothing will be fully settled until South Korea and China, which sent hundreds of thousands of troops into the North to prevent a quick U.S. victory in 1950, also sign off.

There is media speculation in Seoul that Moon might travel to Singapore to stand alongside Kim and Trump and declare an end to the war.