The end of the War
Peace negotiations |
Dwight D.Eisenhower, the president of the U.S 1952
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After 1951 and the intervention of China, the war eventually became a battle of attrition with both sides realising this. Peace negotiations started in 1951 but they were slow and were frequently interrupted by the battle.
1952 Republican candidate Dwight D.Eisenhower won the U.S presidential election. He strongly criticised President Harry S. Truman's handling of the war and after becoming president went through with his promised to travel to Korea. During this trip he was convinced he needed to do something different in order to break the slow negotiations for a peace agreement. He started publicly hinting that the U.S might use nuclear weapons to break the stalemate in Korea, threatening the North Korean leaders to reach an agreement before that happened. He also put pressure on South Korean leaders to drop some demands to speed up the peace talk process. By July 1953, both sides were ready to sign an armistice to end the war with the official signing on July 27 |
ARmistice agreements
A committee of representative from neutral countries was created from the armistice to decide the fate of prisoners of wars for both sides. They eventually decided that the prisoners of war were to decide their own fate and if they wanted to stay in that country or not. A new border between North and South Korea was also drawn, giving South Korea 1,500 square miles of additional territory along with creating a 2 mile wide 'demilitarised zone' between the two countries. |