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Veterans mark Korean armistice day
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the armistice that brought an uneasy peace between the Koreas took place Sunday in Washington. At the Korean War Memorial, hundreds of veterans in their 70s and 80s listened as military bands played. A stamp was unveiled in honor of the people who died in the three-year conflict. "Because thousands of brave men and women from 22 nations put their lives on the line, the face of Asia was changed dramatically for the better," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told them. "I'm so pleased to see those countries represented here today. Thanks to our combined action in Korea, the stage was set for the eventual victory in the larger Cold War. "It took decades, but freedom triumphed throughout most of the Communist world, and one day freedom will come to the people of North Korea as well." He laid a wreath at the memorial as four F-16s flew in tight formation overhead, one of them pealing off in the missing-man formation. Nearly 3 million Koreans and more than 36,500 Americans died in the conflict, which has not officially ended. Though the armistice signed July 27, 1953, halted the fighting, a peace treaty was never signed, and North Korea is still technically at war with its neighbor to the south as well as with the United States and the United Nations. Still, the intervening decades have brought vast changes to the region: the north has become impoverished and isolated and the south has grown in wealth and become more industrialized. Militarily, the north's million-man army has lost its edge. "It is a hypermilitarized society, and yet its military is not very good, it has atrophied," said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. "The weaponry is not nearly as capable as it once was." Though South Korea has just 650,000 soldiers, it is better equipped than its northern neighbors and is supported by 37,000 U.S. soldiers. The Pentagon insists any conflict today would end differently. "If North Korea were to start a conflict like that, it would end with the end of that regime," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said last week. Some South Koreans view such remarks from U.S. officials with concern. "I think they're worried they're going to end up in the middle of a shooting war between their brethren, the North Koreans, and the Americans, who may not really care about what a war would do to South Korea," said Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment.
But North Korea's claim that it is building nuclear weapons has sent chills through policymakers. "I am gravely worried that the plutonium they separate from their own spent fuel could wind up in the hands of terrorists who wish us ill," said Daniel Poneman, a former national security official. South Korea's new president, Roh Moo-hyun, downplayed the threat Sunday. "We have many concerns regarding the nuclear weapons program but, fundamentally, I believe this problem will be resolved peacefully," he told ABC's "This Week." He called North Korea's claims that it has completed reprocessing plutonium "exaggerated." Any reprocessing that may have been done could have been completed only "on a very small scale," he said. "Overall, I don't think their reprocessing is very serious," he added.
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