North-south divide lives on 60 years after the end of Korean War

PANMUNJOM—Some Americans call it the “Forgotten War,” a 1950s conflict fought in a far-off country and so painful that even survivors have tried to erase their memories of it.

The North Koreans, however, have not forgotten. Sixty years after the end of the Korean War, the country is marking the milestone anniversary with a massive celebration on Saturday for a holiday it calls “Victory Day”— even though the two sides only signed a truce, and have yet to negotiate a peace treaty.

Signs and banners reading “Victory” line the streets of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. The events are expected to culminate with a huge military parade and fireworks, one of the biggest extravaganzas in this impoverished country since leader Kim Jong-un took power in late 2011.

Here at the border in Panmunjom, the war never ended. Both sides of the Demilitarized Zone are heavily guarded, making it the world’s most fortified border, and dividing countless families with sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, on the other side. The North Koreans consider the presence of 28,500 US troops in South Korea a continued occupation.

In some ways, war today is being waged outside the confines of the now-outdated armistice signed 60 years ago.

The disputed maritime border off the west coast of the Koreas is a hot spot for clashes. In 2010, a South Korean warship exploded, killing 46 sailors; Seoul blamed a North Korean torpedo. Later that year, a North Korean artillery attack on a front-line South Korean island killed four people, two of them civilians.

Earlier this year, Kim Jong-un enshrined the pursuit of nuclear weapons as a national goal, calling it a defensive measure against the US military threat. In recent months, the warfare has extended into cyberspace, with both Koreas accusing the other of mounting crippling hacking attacks that have taken down government websites in the North and paralyzed online commerce in the South.

Sixty years on, as both Koreas and the United States mark the anniversary on Saturday, there is still no peace on the Korean Peninsula.

The two sides don’t even agree on who started the war.

Outside the North, historians say it was North Korean troops who charged across the border at the 38th parallel and launched an assault at 4 a.m. on June 25, 1950.

North Korea agrees that war broke out at 4 a.m.—but says US troops attacked first. A photo offered as proof at a Pyongyang war museum shows US soldiers advancing, rifles cocked, as they run past the 38th parallel.

“The real history is that the US started the war on June 25, 1950,” Ri Su Jong, a 21-year-old guide at a flower show in Pyongyang, said on Tuesday. “They first attacked our country, and we quickly counterattacked.”

Ri, whose grandfathers both fought in the war, said she was taught that the North Koreans marched into Seoul three days later, “liberating” South Korea from US forces. A panoramic diorama at the war museum shows soldiers hoisting the North Korean flag in a sea of fire and destruction.