This week over 250 people across 31 states met with 187 Congressional offices urging them to vote for peace on the Korea Peninsula. Currently three bills are calling for the United States to take specific action for peace in Korea.

The first of these legislations is critical for humanitarian engagement inside the DPRK.  H.R. 1504/S. 690, known as the Enhancing North Korea Humanitarian Assistance Act, aims to ease the impact of sanctions on much-needed humanitarian aid to North Korea. Due to both sanctions and the global pandemic, North Korea is now more isolated than ever before. Humanitarian assistance is essential for even basic necessities to reach inside the country, serving ordinary men, women, and children. Both UN and US sanctions and regulations are currently impeding humanitarian organizations from doing their job. The Enhancing North Korea Humanitarian Assistance Act ensures that necessary licenses for travel and delivery of goods are expedited to provide life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable in North Korea. Of utmost importance is the expiration of the US travel ban to North Korea, which would free up humanitarian and development workers, allowing them to enter and work inside the country.

Since the signing of the Korean War’s Armistice Agreement in 1953, at least 3 million Korean families have been displaced and divided. It has been almost 70 years of separation, and most Koreans with immediate family members in the North are now passing away, having never reunited with their loved ones. H.R. 826, the Divided Families Reunification Act, facilitates the reunion of Korean Americans with their family members in North Korea. Time is literally running out for this war generation. We must act fast before their chances of reuniting are gone forever. 

At the root of all of these issues is the fact that a peace agreement has never been signed officially end the Korean War. H.R. 3446 calls for the serious, urgent diplomacy to formally end the war. This legislation is known as the Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act.  

Unfortunately, the need for peace on the Korean Peninsula is just now coming to the surface in the United States. Most people are unaware that the Korean War is ongoing let alone the reasons behind these decades of unresolved conflict.

At the core, the Korean War is a relic of the epic standstill between democracy and communism. As the Cold War Era began, the Korean Peninsula was one of the first countries to be divided by the USSR and USA following World War II and Korea’s liberation from Japanese Occupation. 

Now 73 years after the establishment of these two separation nations, one in the North and one the South in 1948, South Korea is still viewed as a colony of US imperialist by North Korea, and North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons continues to threaten the state of peace on the Korean Peninsula. In fact, North Korea possess the fourth largest conventional military forces in the world, but in order to lay down their nuclear weapons, they have insisted on the withdrawal of US troops in South Korea.

Memories of the war are still vividly alive in the hearts and minds of the Korean people, for both those in the North and the South. As the second-most bombed nation in modern history, North Korea’s infrastructure was devastated by war. Millions of people fled south making up a large portion of South Korea’s current population.

For years, North and South Korea did not even recognize each other’s existence. Then in 1984, North Korea began to propose trilateral talks to discuss a peace treaty with the US and South Korea. A unification formula for a “Korean National Commonwealth” was proposed in September 1989. This commonwealth specified a three-phased formula towards peace. Korea would work towards peaceful co-existence through reconciliation and cooperation into a two-system, one state existence. Ultimately, the hope was that this two-system, one state commonwealth would lead towards a unified state for Korea. In January of 1992, the United States and North Korea began high-level direct talks with the aim of achieving long-lasting peace.

However, this proposed peaceful co-existence proved complicated and made slow progress. Trilateral talks turned into four party talks from 1997-1999. The agenda of these talks called for “all issues for building a peace regime and reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula”. Unfortunately, talks stopped abruptly after North Korea continually insisted upon US troop withdrawal from South Korea. Disappointments from the four party talks led North Korea to step up its nuclear weapons program as the first nuclear weapon testing began several years later on October 9, 2006.

With the development of a nuclear program, the United States implemented “Strategic Patience” in an attempt to handle North Korea. Meanwhile, South Korea engaged in joint economic cooperation projects in the city of Kaesong and the tourist region of Kumgang Mountain to help ease tensions. South Korea’s goal was to develop a peace economy. Railways and roads were constructed to reunite the two countries together.

Inter-Korea relations appeared to be improving until clashes at sea led to military aggression. In March 2010, 46 South Korean sailors were killed in the sinking of the South Korean vessel, Cheonan. As a result, the industrial complex in Kaesong was shut down, and tensions between the Koreas continued to escalate.

It was not until the Inter-Korean Summit and Singapore Summit in 2018 that tensions temporarily eased. The US-DPRK Joint Statement in Singapore promised to build a lasting and stable peace regime. Initially North Korea positively responded by releasing US detainees, returning Korean War veteran remains, and declaring a halt to their nuclear program. But with an all-or-nothing approach and US’s continual implementation of maximum pressure sanctions, North Korea’s steps towards denuclearization were abandoned, and the cycle of conflict and tensions resumed.

With ongoing trauma from the war, North Korea’s laying down of nuclear weapons will not prove quick nor easy. The unrelenting presence of US troops in South Korea constantly poses a threat to the North, which validates to them the development of nuclear warfare. Unless a peace treaty is made a priority and an official end to the Korea War is declared, there is little hope that this cycle of threats will end.

It is for this reason that both Korean Americans and non-ethnic Korean Americans have gathered together this past week for a Virtual Peace Advocacy Week. Putting an end to senseless pain and violence on the Korean Peninsula is far overdue. Innocent lives, especially women and children, are suffering as a result of global sanctions imposed upon the North. The entire Korean nation has suffered decades from both family and political separation. Now is the time for peace. Join the advocacy campaign by contacting your state representatives, and let them know that you support H.R.3445- Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act!