On the 73rd anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement late last month, South Korea’s Minister of Unification Chung Dong-young declared, “We must end the Armistice regime and move to a peace regime.” His statement echoed a promise from South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who earlier in July promised South Korea’s Peace Unification Advisory Council that his administration would work to transition the Korean Peninsula away from the Armistice Agreement toward a “peace regime” paradigm.
But what does this actually mean? What is a “peace regime” and is it attainable with North Korea?
These questions matter because they inform the trajectory of South Korea’s policy toward the North and, more fundamentally, how policymakers in Seoul approach peacebuilding on the peninsula.
In short, the “peace regime” is a long-standing South Korean policy design aimed at establishing a new framework for inter-Korean relations. The operative notion is to transition from the Armistice Agreement to an inter-Korean peace arrangement, to reduce foreign interference in the Korean peace process, and to establish interdependencies that would advance the two countries toward eventual reunification.
While at times showing early promise during brief periods of rapprochement, this approach has ultimately been unable to achieve these objectives. This is principally owing to the fundamental mismatch with North Korea’s policy preferences and domestic politics in South Korea. But the treatment of the peace process as discrete phases also runs contrary to the basic principles of peacebuilding, installing arbitrary friction points and creating missed opportunities for shared cooperation.
Effective inter-Korean policy will eventually require a reframing of the peacebuilding efforts on the Korean Peninsula. This not only includes adapting to the Kim Jong Un regime’s decision to abandon unification as a policy objective, but also an evolution of internal South Korean politics that is currently in tension between different stakeholders. In the meantime, the Armistice Agreement will continue to provide a foundation from which peacebuilding efforts can proceed, just as it has for the past seventy-three years.
What the Armistice Actually Does
To understand Seoul’s desire to move beyond the armistice, it is first necessary to understand what the agreement does to support peace and stability on the peninsula.
The Korean Armistice Agreement is an interim agreement meant to maintain a cessation of hostilities and to give space for peacebuilding on the peninsula. It is therefore not incompatible with the peace process; rather, it is integral to it, as it provides a foundation for preserving a cessation of hostilities, institutionalizing the peace process, and creating opportunities for non-violent engagement. It does this through establishment of rights, duties, and obligations for both sides of the peninsula, designation of buffer areas such as the demilitarized zone (DMZ), and the institution of mechanisms for overseeing implementation of ceasefire provisions.
Although there have been notable violations of the armistice over the years, both sides by and large continue to abide by its rules today. On the north side, there is the Korean People’s Army (KPA) Panmunjom Mission, and on the south, there is the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission (UNCMAC) staffed by countries including the United States, South Korea, Denmark, and New Zealand, among others. Switzerland and Sweden comprise the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) and provide third party oversight.
The armistice mechanisms also provide an avenue for communication during periods when broader inter-Korean relations have broken down. Although North Korea ceased communication across inter-Korean channels in April 2023, the hotline between the UNCMAC and the KPA Panmunjom Mission has remained operational since September 2019. Moreover, both sides staff neutral ground at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom, maintaining a constant presence to allow for both routine and crisis communications, as necessary.
The practical importance of these mechanisms is easy to overlook because their most successful efforts are often invisible. It has been a tool for mitigating escalation cycles following the drone incursion incidents of 2022 and 2024, as well as lower level events such as the May 2020 exchange-of-fire between KPA and South Korean military forces inside the demilitarized zone.
There are limitations to the Armistice Agreement, which contribute to criticism among policy audiences in South Korea. The agreement does not establish mutually agreed maritime boundaries, which has been a factor in acute security incidents in the past and could enable grey zone competition in the future. North Korea’s refusal to allow the NNSC to operate in the northern half of the peninsula prevents on-the-ground oversight of its activities. Also, the boundary markers that were installed in the 1950s have faded. This has paved the way for accidental crossings in recent years as KPA forces carry out construction work in the northern half of the DMZ.
These are all notable shortcomings, but they all stem from the fact that the Armistice Agreement was never meant to be a final political resolution of the conflict. The armistice called for the convocation of a political conference within three months of its signing. That event was meant to deliver a political settlement of the war which would address all the outstanding issues necessary to restore a legal state of peace and normalization of relations.
That conference ultimately took place in Geneva in 1954, but the parties could not resolve their fundamental disagreements, particularly over the future political status and unification of the peninsula.
The armistice therefore remained in place.
This history is important because it demonstrates that the absence of a permanent peace agreement did not prevent peacebuilding from happening; rather, the armistice has provided space for it for the past seven decades.
The Pursuit of a “Peace Regime”
The South Korean conception of a “peace regime” came in the early 1990s. The two Koreas had both acceded to the United Nations and negotiated the “Agreement on reconciliation, nonaggression, exchanges and cooperation” — otherwise known as the “Basic Agreement.” This agreement included the following provision: “South and North Korea shall together endeavor to transform the present state of armistice into a firm state of peace between the two sides and shall abide by the present Military Armistice Agreement until such a state of peace is realized.”
It is from this provision that the South Korean government formed its policies around the notion of the peace process existing in discrete phases. In other words, the concept is that there is an “armistice regime,” which is the existing Cold War-era policy paradigm, and a “peace regime” in which there could be a new framework for inter-Korean relations.
Different South Korean administrations have operationalized that idea in different ways. It was a topic of the four-party talks in the mid-1990s with the two Koreas, China, and the United States. During the Sunshine Policy under presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, efforts focused principally on establishing economic interdependence through projects like the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Kumgang Tourist Resort.
The Moon Jae-in administration made perhaps the most ambitious attempt to advance this concept. Its efforts included an End-of-War Declaration, the September 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement, and attempts to restore economic projects at Kaesong and Kumgang. These policies ultimately failed to take root for myriad reasons.
Problems with the Peace Regime
There are three major obstacles to the traditional South Korean conception of a peace regime.
The first is the transformation of North Korea’s own policy preferences. Economic interdependence initially appeared to offer a promising avenue for engagement as the Kim regime sought financial gains. But Kaesong and Kumgang became leverage for the South Korean government in times of tension; for example, when the Park Geun-hye administration shut down operations at Kaesong Industrial Complex following a DPRK satellite launch.
More importantly, North Korea’s conception of inter-Korean relations has changed fundamentally under Kim Jong Un. The DPRK has now constitutionally recognized separate, sovereign states on the Korean Peninsula and abandoned unification as a policy objective. In doing so, the Kim regime has dismantled all previous inter-Korean-related organizations and disavowed any prior initiatives.
The second obstacle has been South Korean domestic politics. While the government has been consistent in maintaining the principle of the peace regime, the conservative and progressive parties have been far apart on their interpretations of what it means in practice. This has led to inconsistency in approaches, such as with the inter-Korean military agreement, which the Moon administration negotiated and concluded, the Yoon Suk-yeol government scrapped, and the Lee administration is now trying to revive. From Pyongyang’s perspective, these policy reversals reinforce the argument that agreements reached with Seoul may not survive a change of government.
Compounding these challenges is that there are divides even within the progressive party over how to proceed with North Korea. Some believe that unification must be the ultimate objective, while others contend that peaceful coexistence is a necessary prerequisite. These debates create challenges for any conceptions of what an agreement necessary for underwriting a peace regime may look like.
There is also a second domestic complication: not every South Korean interest in moving beyond the armistice is necessarily about peacebuilding. Debates over the armistice often involve questions of sovereignty, access to the DMZ, tourism, economic development, and the role of the United Nations Command. While these may be policy priorities for Seoul, they are not interchangeable with the question of how to reduce the risk of renewed war. The result is that “ending the Armistice regime” can mean different things to different South Korean constituencies.
The third and deeper problem is the treatment of the peace process as discrete phases. This places too much emphasis on achieving a signed agreement that can quickly fall apart rather than addressing the specific issue areas contributing to continued risk of conflict. Further, it locks the South Korean government into a policy paradigm that is easily rejected whether in Pyongyang or among different policy actors in Seoul. Finally, it creates unnecessary friction among the different organizations charged with peacebuilding on the Peninsula; e.g., UNCMAC and the Ministry of Unification.
There are missed opportunities for cooperation when focusing on disputes between conceptions of an armistice regime versus peace regime. The alternative is to treat peacebuilding as a continuous process which ultimately moves towards a comprehensive peace agreement rather than treating it as a prerequisite.
Toward Continuous Peacebuilding
Adopting a new mindset for peacebuilding on the peninsula requires preserving what works while targeting individual issues that remain unresolved. This makes for a different conception of peacebuilding, one that is more agile in dealing with North Korea and collaborative among the different stakeholders in the South. Rather than focusing on binary regimes, the various stakeholders in South Korea can look at what foundational elements already exist, target specific issues that require resolution, and then take coordinated action to move forward on them.
In practical terms, a durable peace on the Korean Peninsula will ultimately require agreement on a range of issues including the following: basic principles governing peace, territory and boundaries, risk reduction, denuclearization/arms control, compliance management mechanisms, protocols governing relations between the parties and humanitarian considerations.
None of these issues needs to be resolved simultaneously, nor does progress on one require movement on every other issue. In the meantime, the armistice can continue to provide utility to help the two sides weather acute incidents, North Korean recalcitrance, and swings in the South Korean political pendulum.
A shift to this new mindset among stakeholders on the peninsula would make meaningful progress more achievable. Such progress may not carry the pomp that a signing ceremony might bring, but it reduces the risk of incidents, creates opportunities for non-violent engagement, and enables resolution of long-standing sources of conflict. Ultimately, durable peace is achieved through consistent effort and incremental gains, and the Korean Peninsula is no different.
