The Atlantic

The Deceptively Simple Promise of Korean Peace

There’s a reason it hasn’t happened for 65 years.
Source: Korea Summit Press Pool / Reuters

On Friday, after becoming the first North Korean leader to step into South Korea, Kim Jong Un joined with South Korean President Moon Jae In in making an extraordinary announcement: The two leaders vowed to pursue the shared objective of a “nuclear-free Korean peninsula” and, by the end of this year, to finally proclaim an end to the Korean War.

The declaration established ambitious, if notably vague, parameters for Kim’s upcoming nuclear talks with Donald Trump, who had previously his “blessing” to North and South Korea to discuss an official conclusion to the warwhich was stopped but not formally ended by an armistice in 1953. But it also highlighted just how fast diplomatic efforts to address

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