Demilitarized Zones and Ceasefire Lines

A demilitarized zone is a strip of territory along a contested border from which military forces and installations are formally excluded or restricted, typically established to freeze active fighting without resolving the underlying dispute. The Korean Demilitarized Zone, created by the Korean Armistice Agreement signed on 27 July 1953, runs for about 250 km roughly along the 38th parallel and extends 2 km on either side of the Military Demarcation Line, making it some 4 km wide in total; it remains, more than seven decades later, one of the most heavily fortified borders on Earth, since the armistice suspended hostilities without ever being replaced by a formal peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically still at war. Within the DMZ, the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom is the one location where North and South Korean forces stand in direct proximity, and it has hosted the negotiations and occasional summit meetings, including those between the two Korean leaders and U.S. presidents, that have periodically punctuated the otherwise frozen confrontation.