Sixty years ago on July 27, the United Nations Command, North Korea and China signed the armistice agreement that marked the end of the Korean War. For North Korea, Armistice Day is a day of celebration, marked by fireworks and parades that underscore the role the military played in Korean history and reinforce its continuing domination of national politics to this day.
South of the 38th parallel, the artificial line hastily drawn by two U.S. Army colonels to divide the peninsula, the anniversary is more somber, a day of reflection on the lives lost and ruined, and the national division that endures.
That three-year conflict resulted in 1.2 million deaths and a division — of a peninsula and nation — that endures to this day. Six decades later, the border between the two Koreans remains one of the most heavily fortified and armed on the planet, the ill will between the two Koreas as sharp and the animosity as deep.