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The Peace Deal Obama Should Make: Toward a U.S.-North Korea Peace Treaty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Anthony DiFilippo
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In what Pyongyang's state media billed as a “military drill,” North Korea on January 28, 2010 fired artillery shells near its disputed border with South Korea. South Korea responded by firing its Vulcan cannons into the air – a sign, according to the South Korean press, that Seoul would not give in to intimidation. The incident made global headlines, even though these skirmishes near the Northern Limit Line dividing the countries in the Yellow Sea, which North Korea does not recognize as a legitimate border, have been ongoing for years. If U.S. President Barack Obama wants to resolve once and for all the situation on the Korean Peninsula, he's going to have to take an innovative approach to solving the underlying problem: pushing at last for a formal end to the Korean War.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 7 , February 2010 , e4
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

References

Notes

1 The Text of the Korean War Armistice Agreement, July 27, 1953, accessed here.

2 See U.S. Department of State, John Glennon, ed., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954: The Geneva Conference, Volume XVI (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952-1954), pp. 1-394, accessed here; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, The Geneva Conference, Beijing, November 17, 2000; Kim Byong Hong, “North Korea's Perspective on the U.S.-North Korea Peace Treaty,” Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, vol. 13, no.4, Winter 1994, pp. 85-89.

3 U.S. Department of State, Press Statement by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, North Korea: Four Party Talks, Washington D.C., June 30, 1997, accessed here.

4 For example, during the first North-South Summit held in June 2000, Kim Jong Il supposedly said to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung that U.S. forces in South Korea are not especially bad. See, “North Korea to Revise Party Charter in Exchange for End to South's Security Law,” Yonhap News, June 20, 2000; “Kim Jong Il Agreed on Need for US Troops in South – NK Leader Also Promised to Revise Workers' Party Platform,” The Korea Times, June 21, 2000.

5 “DPRK Diplomats have Little to do for DPRK-U.S. Relations,” Korean Central News Agency, December 7, 1998.

6 Office of the Spokesman, U.S. Department of State, Joint U.S.-DPRK Statement on International Terrorism, Washington, D.C., October 6, 2000, accessed here.

7 Office of the Spokesman, U.S. Department of State, U.S.-DPRK Joint Communiqué, Washington, D.C., October 12, 2000, accessed here.

8 “Conclusion of Non-aggression Treaty between the DPRK and the U.S. Called For,” Korean Central News Agency, October 25, 2002.

9 The Obama administration has several options available to pursue a peace treaty. One is ratification by the U.S. Senate by a two-thirds majority. Another is an Executive Agreement, which the president orders and does not require Senate or Congressional approval. Like one ratified by the Senate, a peace treaty that results from an Executive Agreement is legally binding and recognized by international law. For these and other options, see Congressional Research Service, Treaties and Other International Agreements: The Role of the United States Senate (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, January 2001) here.

10 “Joint New Year Editorial,” Korean Central News Agency, January 1, 2010.

11 “DPRK Top Leader Reiterates Denuclearization of Korean Peninsula,” Xinhua, February 9, 2010; “N. Korea's Kim Reiterates Call for Denuclearization of Peninsula,” Kyodo News, February 9, 2010.

12 Kim Il Sung, For a Free and Peaceful New World, Speech given to the Inter-Parliamentary Conference, Pyongyang, 1991.

13 “US Urged to Make Decision to Replace AA by Peace Treaty,” Korean Central News Agency, January 21, 2010.

14 Goohoon Kwon, “A United Korea? Reassessing North Korea Risks (Part 1),” Global Economics Paper No: 188, Goldman Sachs, New York, September 21, 2009.