We are often reminded that the Korean War ended not with a formal peace treaty, but rather with an armistice. And indeed, that is an irrefutable fact. But it is not true that the absence of a formal peace treaty is an impediment to peace in Korea. The signing of such a treaty between the United States and North Korea today would not facilitate, let alone guarantee, genuine peace or denuclearization on the Korean peninsula. To believe that it would can only be the result of a fundamental misreading of the North Korean regime, both in terms of its nature and of its strategic intent.
It was on July 27, 1953, that the armistice bringing the Korean War to an end was signed. The war ended without a clear victor and with the Korean peninsula divided more or less along the same lines as at the beginning of the war on June 25, 1950. Despite the lack of a final resolution, the armistice made possible a long peace in Northeast Asia and planted the seeds of South Korea’s freedom and prosperity.
In North Korea, on the other hand, July 27 has a different meaning. The date is referred to as the day of “Victory in Fatherland Liberation War,” and Pyongyang commemorates each year “the anniversary of the great victory of the Korean people in the Fatherland Liberation War.” North Korea considers it a reminder of the unfinished business of communizing the entire Korean peninsula—or, in the words of North Korea’s Communist Party Charter, “the accomplishment of the revolutionary goals of national liberation and the people’s democracy on the entire area of the country.” The war may have ended in 1953, but the North Korean revolution rages on. This fact helps explain the fundamental geopolitical dynamic on the peninsula...