June 12, 2018 (Tuesday)
I’m writing this at 11:00 p.m. on June 1, eleven days before June 12, but I’m reserving this space to write something about the summit meeting of U.S.A. and N. Korea. It has been an “on again, off again” kind of meeting. Today it seems certain to happen, but President Trump has cautioned us not to expect much from this first meeting. There will be more meetings.
Singapore, A City-State
We all hope and pray, however, that there can be a formal end to the 65-year-old armistice between the two Koreas and a lasting peace between them, as well as an end to the nuclear threat posed now by North Korea.
From the website of the History Channel:
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. After some early back-and-forth across the 38th parallel, the fighting stalled and casualties mounted with nothing to show for them. Meanwhile, American officials worked anxiously to fashion some sort of armistice with the North Koreans. The alternative, they feared, would be a wider war with Russia and China-or even, as some warned, World War III. Finally, in July 1953, the Korean War came to an end. The Korean peninsula is still divided today.
The Korean War was relatively short but exceptionally bloody. Nearly 5 million people died. More than half of these-about 10 percent of Korea’s prewar population-were civilians. (This rate of civilian casualties was higher than World War II’s and Vietnam’s.) Almost 40,000 Americans died in action in Korea, and more than 100,000 were wounded.
Click here to read personal war stories from Korea veterans.
Silly me–I forgot that June 12 in Singapore was June 11 here at home. The meeting is now over and Newsweek reports 4 results of the meeting.
These are the four key points from the document signed by Kim and Trump:
- The United States and the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
- The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
- Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
- The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.