It is no secret that both China and Russia would prefer greater control over circumstances involving the Korean Peninsula.
In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, South Korean President Moon Jae-in proclaimed, “Ending the Korean War is an urgent task. It is a process that we must go through in order to move towards a peace regime.” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi echoed that sentiment with China’s endorsement of an “end-of-war declaration” during a ministerial-level meeting of the UN Security Council the next day. At that same meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov alluded to the need for new UN Security Council resolutions aimed at maintaining peace on the Korean Peninsula. For all parties, the publicly expressed reasons are the same: Reassurance that North Korea is paramount to establishing enduring peace on the peninsula. However, what underlying reasons do China and Russia have to be so keen for a formal end to the Korean War?
Billed as the foundation of a new peace regime with minimal costs, an end-of-war declaration irreversibly alters the legal framework underwriting the security situation on the peninsula. Specifically, it removes the basis for standing UN Security Council resolutions and the Korean War Armistice. Those impacts alone have consequences that benefit China and Russia but complicate the situation for other regional actors. Ultimately, it irreparably erodes the legal foundation for the multinational United Nations Command in South Korea and Japan, and it reintroduces the necessity for UN Security Council deliberation in response to any North Korean aggression. While there is little doubt the United States government and its allies would seek to minimize such effects of an end-of-war declaration, China and Russia will see a chance to pare down the number of actors in the region, undermine sanctions enforcement regimes, and regain authority over what happens on the Korean Peninsula vis-a-vis the UN Security Council.
An end-of-war declaration remains on the table since the Korean War has never formally ended, leaving instead two relevant legal frameworks intact since the early 1950s: Korean War-era UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and the Korean War Armistice. When conflict broke out on the Korean Peninsula on June 25,1950, the UNSC convened and passed Resolution 82 calling for immediate cessation of hostilities. When that did not happen, the council passed Resolution 83 on June 27, formally recognizing an “armed attack” against the Republic of Korea and calling for all UN member states to assist South Korea in repelling the north’s attack. To support that resolution, the UNSC passed a third resolution ( Resolution 84), with three points: (1) requesting UN member countries provide military forces and other assistance to a “unified command” under the United States; (2) requesting the United States to designate a commander of those forces; and (3) authorizing the Unified Command to fly the UN flag in execution of its mission. Since there has never been a peace treaty or similar international agreement resolving the “armed attack” (see UN Charter Chapter VII, Article 51) underwriting those UNSC resolutions, they have remained intact and serve as the legal foundation for the United Nations Command that still exists today.
The second part of the legal framework is the long-negotiated armistice that formally ended hostilities in 1953. Those negotiations took place over the course of two years with 158 meetings between the warring parties. The armistice is a 20-page document containing 63 provisions and 58 sub-provisions for preventing a resumption of conflict. These provisions included the establishment a Military Armistice Commission and Neutral Nations Supervisory Committee charged with overseeing the preservation of armistice conditions, capping the number of military forces that may be introduced to the peninsula at a given time, and establishing the rules for conduct along the demilitarized zone, among others. All parties agreed to keep the armistice in force until “expressly superseded either by mutually acceptable amendments and additions or by provision in an appropriate agreement for a peaceful settlement at a political level between both sides.”
As a result, both the resolutions and armistice treaty have remained intact and underwritten peace on the peninsula since 1953, though not without challenge.
