07/27/2026
The War is Over
“UPI, Seoul, July 27, 1953 – The shooting in the Korean War ended at 10:00 pm tonight Korea time.
The uncertain and uneasy quiet of a negotiated truce settled over the Korean battle lines.
The armistice documents ending the bitter, stalemated efforts of the Communists to seize all Korea by force were signed at 10:01 a.m. today in the truce village of Panmunjom.
Exactly 12 hours later, official orders for a ceasefire were broadcast to troops on both sides of the battle lines. The war was over after 37 months.
The last Red artillery shell of the war burst on the eastern front 10 minutes earlier. South Korean troops on the central front continued a rattle of small arms fire almost to the moment of the deadline.
Then the strange silence of the cease-fire settled over the moonlit lines.
Front-line UN troops, after destroying their bunkers and fortifications, began moving back after 1 1/4 miles in the first step of an agreement with the enemy to form a 2 1/2 mile buffer zone between the two armies.
The communists also will fall back 1 1/4 miles. These withdrawals must be completed by Thursday night.
But the end of the military phase of the long and costly United Nations collective efforts to end aggression must be followed by a delicate political conference to start within 90 days. And this will in the end determine whether the truce will last, whether the ceasefire can be extended into a genuine peace for Korea.
The truce and the cease-fire wrote the end to a "political action" which developed into one of the longest and most costly wars in American history.
It was entered upon under a United Nations pledge to halt aggression and it ended almost where it began - in a specially constructed "peace pagoda" in the little mud hut village of Panmunjom just below the 38th Parallel.
As war merged into truce, American warplanes turned back to their bases with bomb loads still un-dropped and Allied soldiers dug in, alert against a surprise last-minute Communist attack but under orders not to start a fight of their own.”