North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in may be meeting each other for the first time on Friday, but there's a sense of déjà vu in the air.
They're meeting at Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone on the border of the two countries, the same place where an armistice was signed — by U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William K. Harrison Jr. of the United Nations Command Delegation and North Korean General Nam Il, who also represented China — on July 27, 1953, putting an end to the roughly three years of fighting of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
But the armistice was a ceasefire, not a permanent peace treaty. That means the countries are technically still at war, in a decades-long “conflict without hostilities,” says historian Charles K. Armstrong, a Korean Studies specialist. That's a fact about which U.S. President Donald Trump expressed surprise this month. “People don't realize the Korean War has not ended,” he said.
Read Full Article »