A Look at What NKorea Vow to Scrap Armistice Means The armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 is, at best, a fragile thing: The countries overseeing it have formally accused each other of more than 1.2 million violations. But North Korea's threat to scrap the cease-fire next Monday still matters because the armistice is the key document blocking hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, which technically has remained in a state of war for six decades. If North Korea follows through on its threat to nullify the document that set up the heavily armed buffer zone between the rival Koreas, it could drive badly frayed relations even lower. The threat comes as diplomats at the U.N. negotiate sanctions aimed at punishing Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test and as allies Washington and Seoul plan massive war games set to start Monday. Here's a look at what the North's threat could mean for the Korean Peninsula's fragile peace: The armistice signed on July 27, 1953, set up an apparatus meant to govern a cease-fire ending the war. It can be seen most clearly at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South. The armistice called for the creation of a military demarcation line and the DMZ around it - a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide "buffer zone," with one side controlled by the American-led U.N. Command and the other side by North Korea. South Korean army soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. North Korea's military is vowing to cancel the 1953 cease-fire that ended the Korean War, straining already frayed ties between Washington and Pyongyang as the United Nations moves to impose punishing sanctions over the North's recent nuclear test. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) Close The armistice prohibited "hostile acts" within or across the zone. As a hotline between the sides, it set up a military truce commission at the Panmunjom village that straddles the DMZ. By scrapping the armistice, North Korea would be effectively refusing to recognize the DMZ, which is a violent place even with the rules of the armistice in place: Hundreds of troops serving under the U.N. command have died in the buffer zone over the years. "North Korea wants to show it can attack South Korea at any time," said analyst Cheong Seong-jang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. The chance for limited war ... has increased. The South Korean military says North Korea has violated the armistice by deploying machine guns inside the DMZ, triggering exchanges of gunfire along the border and digging infiltration tunnels. North Korea has accused the U.S. and South Korea of deploying heavy weapons and combat personnel inside the DMZ, conducting war maneuvers targeting the North and firing at North Korean fishing boats near the western sea boundary. North Korea said this week that its Korean People's Army Supreme Command will stop all activities at the "Panmunjom mission of the KPA, which was tentatively established and operated by it as a negotiating body for establishing a peace-keeping mechanism on the Korean Peninsula." The North also vowed to cut off a phone line linking North Korea and the United States at Panmunjom. American and South Korean analysts see the threat as an attempt to win direct aid-for-disarmament talks with Washington by raising fears of war on the peninsula. North Korea wants such negotiations in part to secure much-needed aid and to force the removal of 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the South. "By disavowing the armistice, North Korea is sending a reminder about just how flimsy the peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is," said John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. In Pyongyang's mind anyhow, this serves to reinforce their argument that formal peace talks and a new security architecture is a prerequisite to full denuclearization.