What Will Declaring the Korean War Over Mean? Restore Trust Between Korea, Japan and the U.S. N.Korea Promises to Study ‘Wholly New’ U.S. Offers Six-Party Talks to Go On Indefinitely N.Korea ‘to See Tit-for-Tat Rewards for Dismantling Nukes’ U.S. Offers Compromise Over N.Korea’s Dollar Forgeries N.Korea to Boost 'Deterrent' as Nuke Talks Flop N.Korean War Threat Looks Like Gamble on U.S. Transition Bush Says Missile Tests Further Isolate North Korea Six-Party Talks on Hold as Banks Refuse to Play Ball Does Another Ice Age Loom in N.Korea Nuke Issue?

The two Koreas remain technically at war after an armistice halted combat 50 years ago.

A senior government official points out that the offer of a peace framework on the Korean Peninsula was included in the statement of principles adopted in the six-party talks in September last year, where North Korea promised to give up its nuclear program in return for economic aid. “This means that the current armistice will come to an end,” he explains. It is the starting point for a peace treaty. Some experts say the Korean War is in fact over since there has been no war on the peninsula since the 1953 armistice, but the government does not officially accept the view. The chief problem, however, is that North Korea differs greatly from the U.S. and South Korea in how it views a peace treaty. It has insisted on a peace treaty since 1954, a year after the armistice was agreed.

That means it wants the U.S. Forces Korea withdrawn from the peninsula, UN Command to be dismantled and the Korean Peninsula to be denuclearized before there can be a peace treaty. An official who has been involved in inter-Korean meetings for 20 years said, "The North often suggested that barriers should be removed, such as the presence of the USFK on the peninsula, when it demanded a peace treaty with the U.S.” Lately, there have been signs that the North has become less demanding.

By contrast, the peace treaty the U.S. and South Korea envisage contains regulations in the international community such as a non-aggression pact and respect for mutual sovereignty without preconditions. Kim Keun-sik, a professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University, says the U.S. mentioned a declaration “of the end of the Korean War” instead of a peace treaty because the former is easier to do. “It can be done when Pyongyang and Washington decide to do it, while the latter takes more time as it requires discussions among the two Koreas, the U.S. and China,” as parties in the war, on international guarantees. Jhe Seong-ho, a professor of law at Chung-Ang University, says a peace framework “is about institutionalizing a peaceful status among concerned parties, and a peace treaty could be an important tool to put a peace framework in place. But a peace treaty is not an absolute precondition to achieve a peace framework.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )