A look at what NKorea vow to scrap armistice means

A useful summary below but as the article notes threatening the Armistice is not new.    At the link below is the last report from the Congressional Research Service on the history of north Korean provocations from 1950 to 2007.  (I have recommended that they update this but there have been other priorities of course.)  But this report is useful and I would urge the time from 1997-2007 be scanned to see what the north did during the Sunshine Policy period when the South tried to engage the north and change its behavior with kindness and aid.

Link to CRS report:  http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30004.pdf

V/R

Dave

Mar. 6, 2013 7:43 PM ET

A look at what NKorea vow to scrap armistice means

By FOSTER KLUG, HYUNG-JIN KIM and SAM KIM, Associated Press  

http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-03-06-AS-NKorea-Armistice-Why-It-Matters/id-c97e8f364f0041bbaccb62ea6d3ce0e7

        

South Korean army soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. North Korea's military is vowing to cancel the 1953 cease-fire that ended the Korean War, straining already frayed ties between Washington and Pyongyang as the United Nations moves to impose punishing sanctions over the North's recent nuclear test. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 is, at best, a fragile thing: The countries overseeing it have formally accused each other of more than 1.2 million violations.

But North Korea's threat to scrap the cease-fire next Monday still matters because the armistice is the key document blocking hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, which technically has remained in a state of war for six decades.

If North Korea follows through on its threat to nullify the document that set up the heavily armed buffer zone between the Koreas, it could drive badly frayed relations even lower. The threat comes as diplomats at the U.N. negotiate sanctions aimed at punishing Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test and as allies Washington and Seoul plan massive war games set to start Monday.

Here's a look at what the North's threat could mean for the Korean Peninsula's fragile peace:

ON THE GROUND:

The armistice signed on July 27, 1953, set up an apparatus meant to govern a cease-fire ending the war. It can be seen most clearly at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South.

(Continued at the link below)

http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-03-06-AS-NKorea-Armistice-Why-It-Matters/id-c97e8f364f0041bbaccb62ea6d3ce0e7