World History Minute: The Korean Armistice

Four tired, bearded and grimy U.S. Marines just off the fighting line on western Korean front, read good news in an official handout that armistice to end war was about to be signed at Panmunjom on July 26, 1953. Identifiable at right is PFC Thomas W. O’Connell of Hammond, Wis.
Four tired, bearded and grimy U.S. Marines just off the fighting line on western Korean front, read good news in an official handout that armistice to end war was about to be signed at Panmunjom on July 26, 1953. Identifiable at right is PFC Thomas W. O’Connell of Hammond, Wis. George Sweers / AP Photo
Four tired, bearded and grimy U.S. Marines just off the fighting line on western Korean front, read good news in an official handout that armistice to end war was about to be signed at Panmunjom on July 26, 1953. Identifiable at right is PFC Thomas W. O’Connell of Hammond, Wis.
Four tired, bearded and grimy U.S. Marines just off the fighting line on western Korean front, read good news in an official handout that armistice to end war was about to be signed at Panmunjom on July 26, 1953. Identifiable at right is PFC Thomas W. O’Connell of Hammond, Wis. George Sweers / AP Photo

World History Minute: The Korean Armistice

On July 27, 1953, the Korean War armistice created a demilitarized zone near the 38th Parallel—which meant the boundaries between the North and South were about where they had been when the fighting started. Sixty years later, the Koreas have separately evolved into radically-different places. Historian John Schmidt recalls what happened.