The Korean Peace Agreement and the Korean Peace Regime: A Concrete Draft for Perpetual Peace in Practice

Abstract

How to build sustainable peace on the Korean peninsula? This paper tries to pave a way to pursue perpetual peace, thereby envisioning the concrete draft of the Korean Peace Agreement theoretically and practically. This is the first-ever draft of the Korean Peace Agreement with definite articles after the de facto end of the Korean War. If the directly-related parties - South Korea, North Korea, the USA, and China - would conclude the Peace Agreement, it will entirely replace the present Korean Armistice Agreement and system. The starting point should be the mutual recognition of each other’s complete sovereignty between South Korea and North Korea, and between the U.S. and North Korea. The Korean Peace Agreement further aims at the final denuclearization of North Korea. The former is a very pragmatic vehicle for the latter. The two tasks ought to be ordered simultaneously to cope with the earlier failures. Finally, the Korean Peace Agreement situates the Korean question in the right place where it transcends the delusion of ‘one nation-one state’ and ‘national unification,’ transforming into the momentum of universal and eternal peace.