North Korea in the Korean War parallel boundary, but they could not agree on whether prisoners of war should be forcibly "repatriated." Finally, after around more than two years of negotiations, the adversaries signed an armistice on July 27, 1953. The agreement drew a new boundary near the 38th parallel that gave South Korea an extra 1,500 square miles of territory; and created a 2-mile-wide "demilitarized zone" that still exists today in the North and South Korean borders, in the bottom and top, respectively. The Korean War was relatively short but exceptionally bloody compared to other wars. Nearly 3 million people died. More than half of
Korean War conflicts played more of a role in not deploying them than the threat of a possible nuclear exchange. When Eisenhower succeeded Truman in early 1953 he was similarly cautious about using nuclear weapons in Korea, including for diplomatic purposes to encourage progress in ongoing truce discussions. The administration prepared contingency plans to use them against China, but like Truman, the new president feared doing so would result in Soviet attacks on Japan. The war ended as it began, without U.S. nuclear weapons deployed near battle. There were numerous atrocities and massacres of civilians throughout the Korean war committed by both