Summary
After taking office, Eisenhower soon replaced General James
Van Fleet,
who had started arguing for an all-out invasion, with Lt. General Maxwell
Taylor. No immediate progress was made in the negotiations other than the
exchange of a few prisoners in March of 1953. In order to show strength, the
Communists made an attack on Americans at "Pork Chop Hill" in April. Eisenhower
was unfazed, and by the end of April talks were once again underway
Panmunjom. On June 8, the two sides finally came to an agreement over the
tricky POW (Prisoner of War) issue, outlining their solutions in a document call
the "Terms of Reference." Under this agreement, those POWs that refused to
return to Communist territory would be placed under the auspices of a neutral
commission for a period of three months. If, after the end of those three
months, the POWs still refused to be repatriated, they would be allowed to go
free. With the POW issue solved, it seemed that a final peace treaty was in
sight.
After the "Terms of Reference", however, the Communists pressed for some final
negotiating leverage with a one-week offensive in June. And on a second front,
the US had to deal with the problem of Syngman Rhee, who continued to spout
promises about Korean reunification, and who promised to invade North Korea even
if he only had the ROK army on his side. The US considered organizing a
coup to remove Rhee from power, but never carried the action out. Instead, the
US convinced Rhee to stop shouting for reunification by promising to intervene
on South Korea's behalf if North Korea ever did invade, and by promising $1
billion in aid for South Korea's economic recovery after the war.
Despite these minor crises, agreement was finally reached at Panmunjom. On July
27, 1953, The UN, China, and North Korea signed an armistice. South Korea
refused to sign, but with little effect. Under the terms of the treaty neither
side would be allowed to increase the number of non-Korean military personnel
stationed in Korea. The armistice also established a 2.5 mile wide buffer
between North and South Korea along the 38th parallel, termed the "demilitarized
zone." Within this zone, all troops and weapons were banished. In practice,
however, the zone was heavily militarized, with over 1 million troops facing
off. In fact, because South Korea never signed the armistice, the two countries
remain technically at war even today.
After the war, North Korea and South Korea remained divided, a symbol of the
effect of the Cold War similar to the division of Germany and
Berlin. Families were broken up by the war and
lived on opposite sides of the demilitarized zone, unable to visit or even
communicate with each other.
Syngman Rhee's southern regime became even more dictatorial, and in 1960 he
resigned after student riots. South Korea only became more unstable with his
departure, and it is only in the last two decades that South Korea has really
seen sustained economic growth. In North Korea, Kim Il-sung developed a
full-scale personality cult, and ruled until his death in 1994. Tensions
between the two countries remain to this day, perhaps seen best in North Korea's
boycott of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, to which the USSR and PRC sent athletes.
The legacy of the Korean War continues to haunt the United States, as the US
worries about North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons.
Along with his vast military experience and easy-going attitude, part of
Eisenhower's confidence in the spring of 1953 stemmed from the fact that the US
had successfully tested an which was vastly more powerful than an A-
Bomb, and had thereby surged ahead in the arms race
with the USSR (the Soviets shocked the US by testing their own H-bomb in late
1953). Eisenhower considered nuclear bombs to be just another weapon and was
considering using small nuclear bombs in Korea, especially because, for their
price, they packed more punch than conventional weaponry. He never actually
authorized their use, however.
