Korean Jurists Committee Accuses U.S. of Sidestepping Conclusion of Peace Treaty with DPRK

 The Korean Jurists Committee released a white paper on January 14, disclosing the U.S. criminal acts of persistently sidestepping the conclusion of a peace treaty with the DPRK, an international legal guarantee for defending peace and security in the Korean Peninsula and the rest of the world, and laying bare the U.S. sinister aim lurking behind it before the international community and the world progressives. A peace treaty is an international one which should be concluded in order to put a definite end to the state of war from a legal point of view and establish the relations of lasting peace, the white paper noted, and went on: How to approach the peace treaty is a touchstone to distinguish the peace-loving forces and trigger-happy forces. The Korean Armistice Agreement (AA) was adopted as an international legal document which envisaged the independent and peaceful settlement of the Korean issue free from any foreign interference and the establishment of the lasting peacekeeping mechanism in the Korean Peninsula, not a temporary halt to belligerence, thanks to the DPRK's positive and stubborn struggle to lay a legal groundwork for setting up the relations of peace after the war. The core provision of the AA is Paragraph 60 because it stipulates the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Korea and the peaceful and fundamental settlement of the Korean issue by the concerted efforts of the Koreans and this serves as a clear legal ground for concluding a peace treaty in the future. The U.S. has desperately blocked the peaceful settlement of the Korean issue, systematically violating the AA since the very day of its conclusion. It breached the core provisions of the AA calling for the establishment of the peacekeeping mechanism in the Korean Peninsula right after the ceasefire. The U.S. unilaterally scrapped Paragraph 13 d of the AA banning the introduction of all war hardware into Korea from abroad in 1957 and shipped into the Korean Peninsula various type war means and destructive weapons including nuclear weapons. It reinforced aggressor forces in systematic violation of Paragraph 13 c of the AA banning the reinforcement of military personnel. In 1991 the U.S. nominated a general of the south Korean army as senior member of "UN Forces" of the Military Armistice Commission though it is neither party to the AA nor he is justified to hold the post, completely paralyzing the armistice mechanism. The U.S. has frantically perpetrated military provocations and saber-rattling free from any legal and institutional binding. The Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army in a statement of its spokesman on March 5, 2013 finally declared the complete ification of the AA due to the U.S. as a counteraction for self-defense in order to cope with the U.S. evermore undisguised violations of the AA and its ever-escalating hostile policy toward the DPRK. As the AA was nullified due to the persistent violations of the AA by the U.S. and the inevitable measures taken by the DPRK for self-defence, the relations between the DPRK and the U.S. turned into de facto belligerent ones from the mere technical state of war. The situation reached the brink of war in a moment in August, 2015 due to a trifling incident caused for unknown reason. This finally proved that the defunct AA can hardly preserve peace in the Korean Peninsula. The DPRK recently proposed once again concluding a peace treaty for ensuring lasting peace in the Korean Peninsula at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly and on various other occasions, as required by the dramatically changed recent situation in the peninsula. The conclusion of a peace treaty is an urgent requirement for ensuring peace and security not only in the Korean Peninsula but in the region and the rest of the world. Peace-keeping mechanism has not yet been built in Northeast Asia though it is a very sensitive region beset with a lot of social, historical, political and military problems. The U.S. has escalated the tension in the peninsula, attaching importance to it. This is, in the final analysis, prompted by its ulterior design to contain and pressurize the big powers around the peninsula and put them under its control and thus carry out more easily its strategy for dominating the world. The conclusion of a peace treaty presents itself as an urgent matter and a top priority task to be tackled without delay in the light of the present situation in the peninsula where a war may break out any moment and the interests of regional countries which lack peace-keeping mechanism. The U.S. is sidestepping the conclusion of a peace treaty with the DPRK, claiming that it is a wrong order for the DPRK to call for the conclusion of a peace treaty and there should be crucial progress in the denuclearization, to begin with. The issue of the conclusion of a peace treaty between the DPRK and the U.S. is nothing new and it was not spawned by the former's nuclear deterrent. The DPRK has called for its conclusion long before its access to nuclear deterrent. The U.S. demand that the DPRK dismantle its nuclear weapons as a precondition for the conclusion of a peace treaty is an illegal and brigandish assertion diametrically running counter to norms of international law governing the exercise of the right to self-defence. The DPRK's access to nuclear weapons is entirely legitimate in view of the requirements of international law as it is a measure taken by it for self-defence to protect its supreme interests from the escalating nuclear threat and danger of war posed by the U.S. The U.S. is persistently shunning the conclusion of a peace treaty with the DPRK in a bid to occupy it by mounting a surprise military attack while keeping the unstable situation in the peninsula and threatening the DPRK by force. For this purpose the U.S. has introduced huge aggressor forces and nuclear war means into south Korea to increase the nuclear threat to the DPRK, refusing to honestly respond to its fair proposal for concluding a peace treaty and systematically violating the AA. All facts go to patently prove that the U.S. desperate moves to stifle the DPRK by force, dead-set against the conclusion of a peace treaty with the latter, are extremely dangerous crimes against the regulations of the international law calling for refraining from threatening other countries' sovereignty by force and banning aggression and war and crimes contrary to commitments under the bilateral treaty it promised to fulfill and illegal actions against the international practice calling for establishing relations of peace. The U.S. opposition to the conclusion of the peace treaty with the DPRK is pursuant to its hostile policy toward the DPRK aimed to effect regime change and bring down its social system. No matter how vociferously the U.S. may advocate "peace" in the Korean Peninsula, it can never put under carpet the aggressive nature of the hostile policy it has pursued against the DPRK. The DPRK will neither dismantle its nuclear weapons nor stop its nuclear development but further bolster its all type nuclear weapons including H-bomb both in quality and quantity unless the U.S. rolls back its harsh hostile policy towards the DPRK. The U.S. should admit the criminal nature of its opposition to the proposal for concluding a peace treaty with the DPRK, own due responsibility under international law before the DPRK and the international community and respond to the proposal for establishing the peace-keeping mechanism in the peninsula without delay