Context

Both North and South Korea recently violated the armistice agreement that governs their shared border, according to a probe by the United Nations Command (UNC).

About

What is armistice agreement?

• This armistice signed on July 27, 1953, formally ended the war in Korea. North and South Korea remain separate and occupy almost the same territory they had when the war began.
• The Korean War, which began on June 25, 1950, when the North Koreans invaded South Korea, officially ended on July 27, 1953.
• The Korean Armistice Agreement is somewhat exceptional in that it is purely a military document—no nation is a signatory to the agreement.
• Specifically the Armistice Agreement:
  • suspended open hostilities
  • withdrew all military forces and equipment from a 4,000-meter-wide zone, establishing the Demilitarized Zone as a buffer between the forces
  • prevented both sides from entering the air, ground, or sea areas under control of the other
  • arranged release and repatriation of prisoners of war and displaced persons
  • established the Military Armistice Commission (MAC) and other agencies to discuss any violations and to ensure adherence to the truce terms

Demilitarized Zone (DMZ):

• Stretching 150 miles along the 38th parallel, the 2.5-mile-wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) was established in 1953 as a buffer zone between the warring communist north and capitalist south.
• Today, the DMZ proliferates in popular culture as one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world and a living vestige of the Cold War era—it’s also a tourist attraction.

A brief history of North and South Korea:

• North and South Korea have been divided for more than 70 years, ever since the Korean Peninsula became an unexpected casualty of the escalating Cold Warbetween two rival superpowers: the Soviet Union and the United States.
• In 1945, at the conclusion of World War II, the United States and Soviet Union partitioned the peninsula at the 38th parallel with little regard to the sentiments of the Korean people.
• Arbitrarily divided by ideologically opposed, interloping regimes, tensions between the North and South soon escalated into the three-year Korean War that ravaged the population.
• On July 27, 1953, the DMZ was established as part of ceasefire negotiated between UN and communist forces. A peace treaty was never signed.

About UNC:

• The UNC is commanded by an American general.
• It oversees affairs in the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war.