Sixty years ago today, the guns fell silent on the Korean peninsula. The loss of life and devastation after three years of war between the two Koreas, backed by China and Russia's predecessor the Soviet Union in the north and the US and its UN allies to the south, was appalling. As ceremonies are held and the millions of victims remembered, we are reminded that the fighting may be over, but there is still not yet peace. The nations that fought six decades ago still have bridge-building to do.

That is because the war technically is still not over. North Korea makes that plain through its nuclear and missile programmes and threats against its rivals, the US and South Korea. The armistice signed between the North, China and the UN this day in 1953 stopped the fighting, but its aim was only to attain a "complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved". Years later, there is no peace treaty, soldiers eye each other across the de facto Korean border, the demilitarised zone, and the possibility of fresh conflict remains real.

To Americans, the Korean war is the forgotten war, sandwiched between two longer and, for it, psychologically significant conflicts in Europe and the Pacific and Vietnam. But for North and South Korea, the wounds run deep, with families still divided by ideology and the barbed wire and landmines of the DMZ. Vice-President Li Yuanchao's presence at commemoration events in Pyongyang also makes clear China's involvement. By one count more than 180,000 Chinese soldiers died in the fight to protect borders and save North Korea.