The Korean peninsula remains divided between two hostile nations 70 years after an armistice brought an end to three exceptionally brutal years of combat.
On July 27, 1953, the U.S., China, and North Korea agreed to cease hostilities. An estimated three million people had been killed, mostly civilians, on all sides of a struggle that involved soldiers from more than a dozen countries. The 38th parallel became the de facto border between the two Koreas. It was an armistice, not a peace treaty – and the prospects for real peace seem as distant as ever.
In this episode of History As It Happens marking the 70th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice, The Washington Times’ Guy Taylor and Andrew Salmon discuss why North Korea remains an isolated, unpredictable country while South Korea has developed into a flourishing democracy and important U.S. ally in Asia.
Multilateral efforts to convince North Korea to denuclearize ultimately failed. The Biden administration has chosen not to engage with Pyongyang, leading to dozens of provocative North Korean missile tests in the absence of constructive diplomacy. Inter-Korean diplomacy is close to non-existent. Even Russia and China are keeping North Korea at arm’s length.
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
SEE ALSO: Seventy years on, North Korea tells its own story of a war and its aftermath
