South Korea forges ahead with end of war declaration despite US reservations

South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in is pressing ahead with his quest to declare an end to the Korean war despite months of fruitless diplomacy that have exposed divisions between Seoul and Washington.

Moon told the UN General Assembly in September that a formal declaration to end the war, which was fought from 1950 until the signing of an armistice agreement in 1953, would “mark a pivotal point of departure in creating a new order of reconciliation and co-operation on the Korean peninsula”.

But doubts in Washington, Pyongyang and Beijing have frustrated his hopes of securing a long-sought political legacy as a peacemaker, illustrating the complexity of reconciling the competing interests of the four parties to a 70-year conflict.

North Korea, China and the US-led UN command discussed signing a peace treaty within three months of the armistice but failed to do so.

“All Koreans have long aspired for peace, prosperity, and unification,” said Moon, whose presidential term ends in May, on Monday. “I will continue to make efforts to institutionalise sustainable peace, and I won’t stop that until the end of my term.”

Go Myong-hyun, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies think-tank in Seoul, said: “For Moon, this is not just about diplomatic strategy. It is also a question of national identity. He wants to be able to say that the Korean nation is no longer at war and that eventual unification is still on the horizon.”

Moon’s proposal is not for a legally binding peace treaty but a symbolic declaration that supporters said would kickstart talks with Pyongyang.

“The proposal represents an effort to end the impasse, increase confidence between the parties and build towards a breakthrough on the issue of the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” said Moon Chung-in, a former special adviser to the president who chairs the Sejong Institute think-tank.

But some US policymakers worry that such a declaration could undermine the legitimacy of Washington’s decades-long military presence on the peninsula, where 28,500 American troops are stationed.

“There is a concern in Washington that an end-of-war declaration could serve as a pretext for North Korea and China to question the US’s military presence not just on the peninsula but in the region more widely,” said Soo Kim, an analyst at the Rand Corporation think-tank.

Senior Korean officials have made a series of optimistic statements in recent weeks. Chung Eui-yong, the foreign minister, said Seoul and Washington had “effectively” agreed on the text of a draft declaration, while Moon said on a visit to Australia last month that the parties to the war had agreed to his proposal “in principle”.

But sceptics insisted the South Korean government had put a brave face on a policy that was struggling to gain traction.

Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, has said of the proposal that the US and South Korea “may have somewhat different perspectives on the precise sequence or timing or conditions for different steps”.

Soo Kim added that “Seoul wants an end-of-war declaration to initiate a process by which North Korea takes concrete steps to reduce its nuclear threat, whereas Washington wants to see steps taken before it even considers the proposal.

“The South Koreans like to present questions over timing and sequencing as minor differences but they are absolutely fundamental and there is no sign that they are being bridged.”

Even if Seoul and Washington were able to resolve their differences, said analysts, there was little indication that North Korea was prepared to engage.

Pyongyang maintains that any progress in discussing a formal declaration depends on Washington abandoning its “hostile policy” towards the North.

“What needs to be dropped is the double-dealing attitudes, illogical prejudice, bad habits and hostile stand of justifying their own acts while faulting our just exercise of the right to self-defence,” Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said in September — the last time a senior member of the regime commented on the proposal.

Go Myong-hyun said that Moon was running out of time. “From Pyongyang’s perspective, what is the point of signing an end-of-war declaration if the South Koreans then elect a president who opposes it?”

Moon’s plans have also been hampered by the deterioration in relations between the US and China. South Korean hopes that the Beijing Winter Olympics in February would provide the backdrop for a negotiating push have been scuttled by a US-led diplomatic boycott of the games.

Some observers have suggested that China would welcome an end-of-war declaration for the same reasons that many in the US oppose it.

But Lee Sang-soo of the Institute for Security and Development Policy think-tank in Stockholm said that Beijing was “wary of any process that might lead to a rapprochement between Pyongyang and Washington”.

Lee added that Moon’s proposal was also opposed by Tokyo. Japan is not a party to the war but maintains a hard line against the Kim regime.

For its proponents, however, the proposal is as much a moral imperative as a diplomatic gambit.

“The unresolved status of the Korean war is an anomaly and an affront to those who fought in that war,” said Jessica Lee, a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

“It can’t be too early to do something that is already decades overdue,” said Moon Chung-in of the Sejong Institute. “The US doesn’t want ‘forever wars’, and neither do we.”