TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/50s/50korea

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The Korean War

  [In 1950, the war against Communism had many Asian
battlegrounds. China was lost, as was North Korea, and in Indochina
the French were barely managing to hold back the Communist Viet
Minh. Two hundred miles south in Malaya, the British were engaged
in a grim contest with homegrown guerrillas; in the Philippines,
Huk rebels pursued their drive against the government. Things
looked grim. Then in June heavy fighting broke out in Korea.]

                                                     (July 3, 1950)

  It was 4 a.m. Sunday in Korea; it was still only 3 p.m. Saturday
in Washington. Just before a grey dawn came up over the peninsula,
North Korea's Communist army started to roll south. Past terraced
hills, green with newly transplanted rice, rumbled tanks. In the
rain-heavy sky roared an occasional fighter plane. Then the heavy
artillery started to boom.

  All along the 38th parallel--the boundary between North and South
Korea--the invaders met little resistance. In a six-pronged drive the
Communist troops swept south. One North Korean force seized the
isolated, virtually indefensible Ongjin Peninsula in the northwest
corner of the republic. Another, spearheaded by tanks, drove down the
Uijonbu Valley toward the Southern capital of Seoul, which lies on
the western side of the peninsula, only about 40 miles south of the
38th parallel. A full Northern division surrounded the central Korean
railway terminus of Chunchon, just south of the border.

  Still another drive headed down South Korea's east coast, with
the objective of joining forces with four amphibious groups which
had been landed behind South Korean lines.

  The Korean navy (consisting of small patrol craft) announced hat
it had sunk a Russian gunboat in Korean territorial waters. A
government spokesman claimed that some North Korean tanks were
manned by Russians, and it was reported that behind each North
Korean pilot sat a Russian observer to give aid & comfort. No one
was quite sure just how heavy a role Russian personnel played in
the North Korean army, but there could be no doubt that Moscow's
guiding hand was present.

  But the Communist mood of triumph was premature. Slowly, the
anxiously watching world saw sign after sign that there was still
plenty of fight in the South Koreans--and in the U.S. First.

  The South Korean government had hopefully warned the population
not to be frightened by "strange looking" aircraft, i.e., American
planes. South Koreans anxiously waited for the strange-looking
planes to appear in the sky. For hours, hope teetered in precarious
balance with despair. Then came the electrifying news from
Washington: the Yanks were coming.


                                                      (July 3, 1950)

  The big question left for harry Truman to decide was not whether
to help, but how. As the tense White House conferences stretched
through Sunday night and Monday, that question merged with another:
Would the rapidly retreating South Koreans be able to hold out long
enough for the U.S. to act? By Tuesday both questions were
answered.

 "The attack upon Korea," said the President of the U.S., "makes it
plain beyond all doubt that Communism has passed beyond the use of
subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed
invasion and war.": To meet this clear challenge, thus clearly
recognized, he ordered:

  1) U.S. air and sea forces to give the Korean government troops
"cover and support." Presumably this meant, as the Korean government
had been desperately telling its people, that U.S. planes would bomb
any South Korean city or military positions held by the Communist
invaders.

  2) The Navy's Seventh Fleet "to prevent any attack on Formosa."
Thus if the Korean invasion was a feint and a prelude to a Chinese
Communist attack on Formosa, the U.S. would be there to block it.
In exchange for this protection, Harry Truman called on
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's government to cease provocative
bombardment of the Communist-held mainland.

  3) Immediate strengthening of U.S. forces in the Philippines, and
a speedup in military aid for the Philippine government.

  4) Faster delivery of arms to the French and anti-Communist
native forces in Indo-China, "and the dispatch of a military
mission to provide closer working relations with those forces."


  [It was the first full-scale war of the nuclear age, and no one
could be sure that one side or the other would not resort to atomic
weapons, particularly if the military situation looked bad.
Nevertheless, the non-Communist world rallied to South Korea's
defense.]

                                                     (July 10, 1950)

  No previous U.N. Security Council meeting, even those that faced
the crises over Iran and Palestine, had been so important. North
Korea had rejected the U.N. cease-fire order. For the first time
in its five faltering years, U.N. faced the issue of taking up arms
to repel an armed attack.

  With the calmness of a Vermont lawyer reading a brief before a
judge in chambers, [U.S. Ambassador Warren] Austin twanged: "The
armed invasion of the Republic of Korea continues. This is, in fact,
an attack on the United Nations itself." He urged that "the Members
of the United Nations furnish such assistance to Republic of Korea as
may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore
international peace and security to the area."

  After the council session resumed, Sir Benegal read the U.S.
resolution and added: "All those who are in favor, please raise your
right hand." When the hands went up they showed seven votes (Britain,
China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Norway, U.S.) for; Yugoslavia against;
India and Egypt not voting. (Later India voted for. The government of
Egypt's fat, foolish King Farouk instructed Fawzi Bey to vote against.)

  The seven votes were sufficient,although the Soviet Union later
claimed that its own absence from the council table made the action
illegal. Eleanor Roosevelt had the answer to that. In London she
said: "All this talk of [Russia's] about the Security Council
derision not being legal because she's not there, well, whose fault
is it that she's not?" By week's end, 40 nations were in line and
offers of armed aid for Korea had poured in from every corner of
the earth.

  The U.S. went into Korea with the official backing of the U.N.


  [The North Koreans charged down the peninsula as South Korean
and U.S. troops fell back and back. Then as troops sand supplies
poured into the beachhead at Pusan, the retreating stopped.]

                                                   (August 28, 1950)

  For weeks the U.S. command in Korea has faced a crucial choice
between two plans of battle. One was to withdraw to the shortest
possible defense perimeter immediately surrounding Pusan and build
up within it for a counterthrust. A shorter perimeter could have
been more easily held by fewer troops, giving battle-weary G.I.s
chance to rest up in the rear.

  The other bolder plan called for holding the widest possible
perimeter, including Taegu and Pohang. This would mean stringing out
in a thin line and shuttling units back & forth to block enemy
thrusts; but for political, morale and strategic reasons it seemed to
the top command important to hold Taegu, the provisional capital of
the South Korean government and an important base for U.S. tactical
aircraft. The hold-Taegu strategy, obviously ordered by General
Douglas MacArthur and General Walton Walker, prevailed. By last week
there were heartening signs that that strategy was correct.

  The Communist enemy was showing signs of attrition. Time & again he
he failed to take advantage of situations where the U.S. forces were
exposed to serious damage and possible breakthrough. For example,
while his Changnyong bridgehead was being cut to shreds, the North
Koreans in a smaller bridgehead to the north did nothing to help.

  The Reds had suffered desperately from U.S. airpower. Almost
since the beginning of the war the enemy had had to move men and
supplies by night; by day his supply lines and battle areas had
been bombed and strafed, while his factories and storehouses in the
rear were being pounded by strategic bombers.

  Where once the invaders used 20 or more tanks to spearhead major
assaults, he now used three or four. When he was presented with
juicy targets, his artillery was often silent, presumably for lack
of shells. Many North Korean prisoners complained of short rations.

  The U.S. beachhead perimeter was taking on the likeness of a
tough elastic barrier which yielded locally under pressure but
quickly snapped back to upset the invaders.Said the commander: "If
we had four new division this afternoon we could sweep straight
through the enemy."

  The time for a general Allied counteroffensive was still far off.
According to U.S. intelligence the North Koreans now had 15
divisions in the line, five more than they reportedly had two weeks
ago, indicating that the Reds had committed the bulk of their
reserves. This week the enemy was again massing troops in the south
between Chinju and Masan, but by all possible human calculations,
the U.N. beachhead was assured. It was the best week for the U.N.
forces since the war began--and perhaps the war's turning point.


  [In September, U.N. forces broke out of the beachhead and
counterattacked. The flanking landings at Inchon, strategic
masterstroke of General Douglas MacArthur, succeeded brilliantly.
Soon the enemy was fleeing northward, with U.N. troops in hot
pursuit.]

                                                (September 25, 1950)

 Massive U.N. air strikes softened Inchon's beaches and all land
approaches to the port. As Admiral James H. Doyle's task force
approached, six destroyers gamely plowed ahead, drew and silenced
the fire of hidden enemy batteries on Wolmi Island. Several ships
were damaged, one severely. Then the U.S. 1st Marine Division hit
the beaches.

  The enemy's beachhead resistance was negligible. Within the first
four days of their assault, the marines stormed Wolmi, swept
through Inchon and seized Seoul's Kimpo airfield. Advancing
rapidly, they entered the capital's suburbs, prepared to cross the
Han River and get astride the communications to the south and the
rear of the enemy's army around the Pusan perimeter. This week the
enemy rallied; on the edge of their advance the marines came up
against stiffer resistance.

  In the U.N. beachhead around Pusan, General Walton Walker's
eighth Army (four U.S. divisions and a British brigade) went over
to a general offensive. The aim was to break the enemy ring and
link up with the U.N. forces fighting their way east from Inchon.
Initial advances along the 120-mile perimeter were spotty.
Nevertheless, at week's end Walker's men had established
bridgeheads on the west bank of the Naktong.

  But there appeared so far no clinching sign that the enemy was
in general retreat or that his morale had cracked. He still
counter-attacked, resisted fiercely, took back several nameless
ridges. He had plenty of ammo. For days his own radio kept mum
about the Inchon landing. U.N. planes dropped 3,000,000 leaflets,
breaking the news and calling on him to surrender or die. At week's
end his choice was still death, not surrender.


                                                   (October 2, 1950)

  This week Douglas MacArthur announced that Seoul had fallen. The
city was a prize of primary military, political, psychological and
economic importance. It was the climax of a brilliant week for the
United Nations in Korea.

  MacArthur had predicted that the Reds would find it impossible
to try to contain both the Inchon-Seoul invasion beachhead and the
Eighth Army's southeastern perimeter. They would have to take their
choice. Last week they took it. They fought like tigers for Seoul
and melted away in the south. Early this week, Eighth Army
spearheads racing west and north from the old perimeter were only
25 miles from a link-up with the southern arm of the Seoul enclave.


                                                   (October 9, 1950)

  The enemy's collapse came with avalanche swiftness.

  On Tuesday his resistance still seemed determined. The high
command in Tokyo announced the capture of Seoul, but within the
battered capital fierce street battles raged. Along the southern
perimeter, the North Korean withdrawal from the Naktong went
stubbornly.

  On Wednesday the avalanche began to roll. Late the night before
a motorized column of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, barreling up
from the south, had joined hands with the X Corps pushing down from
the Inchon beachhead. "Complete breakthrough," reported Tokyo. On
Thursday the enemy's main force abandoned Seoul, his trapped
divisions in the southwest fell apart. On Friday, U.N. communiques
called it a "rout." By week's end, the avalanche had run its
thunderous course. North Korean organized resistance had ended.
U.N. forces were mopping up isolated remnants, the first U.N.
division had crossed the 38th parallel.


 [Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, fell to the U.N. as troops
raced north toward the Chinese border. Talk of postwar
reconstruction was already beginning. Then in late November came
disaster.]

                                                 (December 11, 1950)

  The U.S. and its allies stood at the abyss of disaster. The
Chinese Communists, pouring across the Manchurian border in vast
formations, had smashed the U.N. army, this week were clawing
forward to pursue and destroy its still-organized fragments. Caught
in the desperate retreat were 140,000 American troops, the flower
of the U.S. Army--almost the whole effective Army the U.S. had.
With them, fighting to establish a defensive position, were 20,000
British, Turkish and other allies, some 100,000 South Korean
soldiers.

  It was defeat--the worst defeat the U.S. had ever suffered. Even
though the U.N. forces might still have the luck, skill and power to
slow the Communist drive and withdraw in good order from the
devastated peninsula, it was defeat that could not be redressed in
Korea. If this defeat were allowed to stand, it would mean the loss
of Asia to Communism. If it were allowed to stand, no Asian could
evermore put any stock in the promise that had given him hope against
Communism--the promise that the U.S. and its allies would come to his
help. And no European would be able to believe with any to believe
with any firmness that the U.S. was the bulwark against Communism
that it professed to be before the disaster in Korea.


                                                 (December 11, 1950)

 Last week the conservative military textbooks, the old ways of
wart, caught up with the U.S. and with a daring champion of new
ways of war, Douglas MacArthur. He had beaten the textbooks again
& again; last week they beat him.

  In North Korea, he tried what he called a "massive compression
envelopment" against greatly superior forces. He undoubtedly
underestimated the size and the quality of the Chinese troops.
Their lack of tanks, artillery and transport looked like fatal
weakness to exponents of current U.S. military doctrines.
Specifically, MacArthur overestimated the effect of his air power
on the Chinese troops.

  The enveloped Chinese broke through the envelopment. Their thrust
was so wide, deep and strong that his inadequate reserves (grouped
around the 1st Cavalry Division) could not check it. MacArthur's
center was gone and the Reds lapped around the two inside flanks
of his divided army, pushing both wings back toward the sea.


                                                 (December 18, 1950)

  "Retreat, hell!" snapped Major General Oliver Prince Smith,
commander of the 1st Marine Division, with which he had fought on
Guadalcanal, New Britain, Peleliu, Okinawa. "We're not retreating,
we're just advancing in a different direction."

  Assembled in Hagaru, south of the frozen, blood-stained beaches
of the Changjin Reservoir, the 1st Marine Division and the 7th had
already suffered heavy casualties in battles with the encircling
Communists. They had heard the screams of their comrades when the
Reds lobbed phosphorous grenades into truckloads of U.S. wounded.
When the order came to start south, the enemy was already closing
in on Hagaru's makeshift airstrip, whence thousands of wounded and
frostbite victims had been flown out. The last plane waited an
extra hour for one desperately wounded man.

  The marines abandoned none of their disabled men, but bulldozers
pushed the dead into mass graves by hundreds.

  The fight to Koto, six miles down the road, was the worst. The
crawling vehicles ran into murderous mortar, machine-gun and small-
arms fire from Communists in log and sandbag bunkers. The U.S.
answering fire and air attacks killed thousands of the enemy and
held the road open. When the lead vehicles reached Koto the
rearguard was still fighting near Hagaru to keep the enemy from
chewing up the column from behind.


  [The U.N. forces retreated beyond the 38th parallel, prepared
to fall back even further under the Chinese onslaught. Seoul was
retaken by the Communists.]

                                                  (January 15, 1951)

  The suicidal fury of the Reds' first attack north of Seoul was
astounding. The vast mass of the enemy pressed on by day as well
as by night, ignoring U.S. artillery zeroed in on their lines of
advance,ignoring the swarm of planes that hammered them from the
air.

  Having forced their way across the frozen Imjin River, the
Chinese ran into minefields and barbed wire. The leading elements
marched right through the minefields, most of them blowing
themselves up, and those who followed advanced over their own dead.
When they reached the barbed wire, hundreds of Chinese flung straw
mats down on the wire, then threw themselves down on the mats, and
the others trod the living bridge over the wire.

  From the north, northwest and northeast, The Chinese converged
on Seoul. The U.S. 24th Division, holding the center road leading
to the city, slowed up the enemy by counterattacking with 20
Pershing tanks, and briefly recaptured Uijongbu. But this was only
a delaying action; Seoul was doomed. President Syngman Rhee and his
cabinet fled to Pusan. Allied evacuation of the capital was carried
out efficiently and without undue haste. "After all," said a U.S.
officer bitterly, "we've had a lot or practice."


  [The retreat finally slowed, the disposition of forces
stabilized on both sides, and there began two years of bloody
stalemate: ground was gained, then lost, towns and villages changed
hands over and over, and casualties, both military and civilian,
kept mounting.]

                                                     (April 9, 1951)

  The U.N. secretariat reported last week that U.N. forces in Korea
had suffered total casualties of 228, 941.Dead 25, 374. Wounded
128,394. Missing 75,173.

  Casualties by nations:

South Korean             168,652
U.S.                      57,120
Turkey                     1,169
United Kingdom               892
France                       396
Australia                    265
The Netherlands              112
Siam                         108
Greece                        89
Canada                        68
The Philippines               55
New Zealand                    9
Union of South Africa          6
Belgium, Luxembourg            0


  [In the Philippines, meanwhile, a different kind of rebellion
was being dealt with in a different way.]

                                                    (March 19, 1951)

 Since he took office last September, 41-year-old Secretary of
Defense Ramon Magsaysay has realized that pacifying Luzon's 15,000
Communist Huk rebels is more than a military problem. The Huk rank
& file--and most Huk sympathizers--are poor, landless peasants, led
into rebellion by Communist promises to Utopia. Magsaysay has come
to believe that a little government help and a few acres of land
would transform Huk guerrillas into peaceful citizens.

  Last month he announced a plan for doing this. With 4,000,000
pesos of government aid, Magsaysay started a land resettlement
project in the fertile but undeveloped plains of Mindanao. Instead
of jail sentences, each Huk who is captured or gives up will get
ten hectares (25 acres) of this land, plus a house, tools and work
animals. "Here is a good way to give those boys in the mountains
something to come down for."

  Civilian Filipinos were enthusiastic about the idea. So were many
Huks. In the last six weeks, since word of Magsaysay's plan spread
into Luzon's hills, 500 Huks have surrendered and applied for
resettlement. Three hundred hectares of that virgin land in
Mindanao have been cleared for the first batch of Huk settlers, who
will leave Luzon within the next few months. More are expected. "We
keep hammering at them," said Magsaysay, "and looking for them in
the jungles, and promising them this green valley where they can
have their own homes and live happily with hot coffee and ice cream
every day."


  [When the Korean fighting had been going on for a year, the
Communist leaders indicated a willingness to open armistice
talks.]

                                                      (July 9, 1951)

  Within three hours, U.N. Commander Matthew Ridgway was carrying
out his instructions. Nearly 100 radio stations beamed his words,
in English, Korean and Chinese, to "the Commander in Chief,
Communist Forces in Korea." "...I am informed," said the message,
"that you may wish a meeting to discuss an armistice providing for
the cessation of hostilities and all acts of armed force in Korea,
with adequate guarantees for the maintenance of such an armistice.
Upon the receipt of work from you that such a meeting is desired
I shall be prepared to name my representative..."

  Then came the waiting. Along the battle lines, fighting
slackened.

  The world did not have to wait long before Radio Peking crackled
to life again. It was 11 o'clock Sunday night in Tokyo, 9 Sunday
morning in Washington--just 39 hours after Ridgway's invitation.

  "General Ridgway, commander in chief of United Nations forces:
We agree to meet your representative for conducting talks
concerning cessation of military action and establishment of peace.
We propose that the place of meeting be in the area of Kaesong on
the 38th parallel. If you agree, our representatives are prepared
to meet your representative between July 10 and 15, 1951."


                                                (September 17, 1951)

  After two contentious, fruitless months on history's stage, the
ancient, battle-scarred city of Kaesong last week seemed ready to
be moved into the wings. There was still a chance that the cease-
fire talks, broken off by the Reds, might be picked up again--but
in all probability not at Kaesong.

  The stream of Communist invective and charges of U.N. truce
violations continued last week without letup. The Peking radio
frankly admitted what the free world has suspected for weeks--that
the breakdown at Kaesong was closely linked to the signing of the
Japanese treaty. The Reds had obviously hoped to use Korea as an
instrument of blackmail at San Francisco.


  [The talks resumed in October at Panmunjom. As months passed and
proposals and counterproposals were made and dismissed, the main
sticking point came to be the U.N.'s refusal to repatriate forcibly
some 100,000 captured Chinese and North Korean soldiers who did not
want to return to their Communist homelands. Finally, in April
1953, Communist negotiators turned conciliatory.]

                                                     (June 15, 1953)

 In the boxlike wood-and-matting conference house at Panmunjom,
Lieut. General William K. Harrison and General Nam II signed the
"terms of reference" for an agreement on the exchange of prisoners
of war. The Communists gave in on voluntary repatriation, the
single issue that for 17 months had stood in the way of an
armistice. Here is how the P.W. plan will work:

  1) Five neutral nations, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland,
Czechoslovakia and India, will take custody, in Korea, of the
46,380 North Korean and Chinese prisoners who say they do not want
to return to their homes. Only Indian troops, armed with side arms,
will stand guard.

  2) For 90 days, not more than seven Communist representatives for
each 1,000 prisoners will "explain to all the prisoners of
war...their right and...inform them of any matters relating to
their return to their homelands, particularly of their full freedom
to return home to lead a peaceful life."

  3) Any prisoner who decides to return home may apply to the neutral
commission for repatriation. But before he goes, a majority vote of
the commission must approve his application. Possible grounds for
disapproval: the belief that the prisoner has been coerced into
changing his status.

  4) After 90 days, the political "peace conference" which will
follow the armistice "shall endeavor to settle" the question of the
P.W.s who have not applied for repatriation.

  5) The crux of the matter. If the conference fails to settle the
question in 30 days, "any prisoners of war who have not exercised
their right to be repatriated...shall be changed from the P.W.
status to civilian status by declaration of the neutral nations
repatriation commission."


  [In July, the long-awaited armistice agreements were signed. The
war ended only a few thousand yards from where it had begun. The
U.N. principle of repelling aggression had been upheld, but the
cost in casualties (some 74,000 U.N soldiers killed, including
36,600 Americans, 1 1/2 million Communist military casualties and
some 2,000,000 civilians on both sides killed and wounded) was
staggering.]

                                                    (August 3, 1953)

  Promptly at 10, the two chief actors entered. Lieut. General
William K. Harrison, the U.N. senior delegate, tieless and without
decorations, sat down at a table, methodically began to sign for
the U.N. with his own ten-year-old fountain pen. North Korea's
starchy little Nam II, sweating profusely in his heavy tunic, his
chest displaying a row of gold medals the size of tangerines, took
his seat at the other table, signing for the enemy. Each man signed
18 copies of the main truce documents (six each in English, Korean,
Chinese), which aides carried back & forth. The rumble of artillery
still rolled through the building. Flashbulbs blazed and cameras
whirred as the two chief delegates silently wrote. When they had
finished, West Pointer Harrison and Nam II, schoolteacher in
uniform, rose and departed without a word to each other, or even
a nod or a handshake.

  Outside, a correspondent asked a British officer whether the
Commonwealth Division would celebrate with the traditional
fireworks. "No," said the Briton, "there is nothing to celebrate.
Both sides have lost."

  Syngman Rhee, Korea's veteran fighter for fredom, sat on a stone
bench in his garden at Seoul. He still spoke against the truce, but
his talk now was dull and resigned. There had been some fear that his
ROK troops might refuse to withdraw from the buffer zone--but they
ceased fire along with their U.N. comrades in arms. Syngman Rhee,
whose opposition might have wrecked the truce if the Communist hunger
for a truce had not been voracious, now declared: "My desire is
strong not to follow unilateral policy if it can be avoided."

  Up to the last, irritations and uncertainties had persisted.
General Mark Clark, who flew from Tokyo to Seoul in his
Constellation, had expected to sign the truce at Panmunjom, with Kim
II Sung and Peng Tehhuai (the North Korean and Chinese commanders) as
the other signatories. But for this, the Reds made unacceptable
conditions: no South Koreans or reporters could be present.

  So Clark signed alone in a tin-roofed movie hall at Munsan, the
allied truce base, three hours after the Panmunjom signing, and Kim
and Peng presumably signed in their own lair at Pyongyang.


  [Prisoner exchanges began. But under the terms of the armistice,
prisoners refusing repatriation had to be interviewed by a neutral
commission that would explain their right to choose. The prisoners
violently resisted the explanations.]

                                                   (August 17, 1953)

  At 8:56 one cool, grey morning last week, a drab Molotov truck
pulled up with a growl in front of the triple-arched "Freedom Gate"
at Panmunjom. Pale hands and paler faces appeared from behind the
grey canvas that covered the van. One by one, U.S., Turkish and
South Korean soldiers leaped from the tailgate or climbed down a
blue ladder to freedom. Some grinned, some wept, some stared. A
major shouted his name to correspondents. "Operation Big Switch"
had begun.

  Every day last week, approximately 400 U.N. prisoners arrived at
Panmunjom and by helicopter, truck and ambulance, were sped back
to Freedom Village near Munson. Some of the survivors of Communist
prison camps were healthy, robust men, who grinned, waved and
danced on the gravel path to the receiving tents. Some could not
dance, because they were emaciated or had only one leg. Others were
litter cases, undernourished or sick with tuberculosis or
dysentery.


                                                   (October 12, 1953)

  For two labyrinthine years, the U.N. held out at Panmunjom for the
right of prisoners of war to refuse to go back behind the Iron
Curtain. That question finally became the central issue of the
truce talks. The truce agreement concede the U.N. view: it
specifically ruled that no P.W. should be forced to return home.

  To get this agreement, however, the U.N. did agree that P.W.s
should spend 90 days in neutral custody while representatives of
their governments "explained" their positions. Furthermore, the
U.N. omitted to negotiate the details of this procedure. That was
left to the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission comprising Red
Poland and Czechoslovakia, neutral Sweden and Switzerland, and
India, the chairman. Last week the U.N. was shocked to learn that
its sin of omission might imperil the basic principle of
nonrepatriation for which, in effect, the closing months of the war
had been fought.

  First, the Neutral Commission sent a letter to the 14,800 Chinese
and the 7,800 North Korean prisoners at Indian Village in Korea's
demilitarized zone. "We have come here," the commission said, "to
protect you from any form of coercion...to assure you of your freedom
to exercise your right to be repatriated." The P.W.s must listen
"absolutely by necessity" to the explainers, "who would inform you of
your peaceful life and complete freedom upon your returning home."

  This letter indicated that the commission and its Indian
chairman, Lieut. General K.S. Thimayya, had accepted the Communist
argument that "certain interested parties," and not the love of
freedom, were keeping the prisoners on this side of the Iron
Curtain. At once, the U.N. protested that the letter's "wording,
method of presentation and the strong implications have been
slanted towards unduly influencing prisoners of war...to
repatriation rather than making a free, independent choice."

  Two days later the commission issued the long-awaited ground
rules for the 90-day explanations. After one quick look at them,
one U.N. officer gasped: "They've bought just about everything the
Communists wanted." The commission ruled that each P.W. must
undergo individual explanation, eight hours a day, six days a week,
before an audience "not exceeding 35" officials of his own and
neutral countries. Again the U.N. protested.

  At week's end Commission Chairman Thimayya who casts the
commission's deciding vote rejected the U.N. protests against the
commission's ground rules for the explanation period; he also
requested that the 90 days be extended beyond the accepted 24th of
December. The U.N. refused; the jittery P.W.s, already feeling
abandoned by their friends, might well decide, "Ten days could
stretch into ten years. Let's throw in the towel." Said outgoing
U.N. Supreme Commander General Mark Clark: "We cannot be a party
to breaking faith."

  But until Dec. 24 it would be the commission and Thimayya, not
the U.N. and Clark, that would decide whether the Communists
explain or coerce, thanks to that error of omission at Panmunjom.


                                                   (January 4, 1954)

  On the same weird, wild note with which they had begun ten weeks
ago, the P.W. explanations in the Korean neutral zone ended last
week. On that last day, U.N. explainers broadcast a final appeal
to the 22 Americans, one Briton and 77 pro-Red South Koreans who
refused to go home and refused to be interviewed. The broadcast
words were wasted breath. The prisoners refused to listen, linked
arms for a Korean fold dance, banged cymbals, tried to drown out
the loudspeakers with Communist songs. When the broadcast appeal
was over, the U.N. explainers waited around for half an hour, then
abandoned the prisoners to the consequences of their choice.

  The handful of Americans had got disproportionate amount of
headline space of late, almost enough to lend a spurious
evenhandedness to the failure of "explaining" by either side. The
facts were quite the contrary. On the U.N. side are more than
22,000 Chinese and North Korean prisoners who have renounced
Communism. The communists pleaded with 3,173 of them in explaining
sessions, and persuaded only 138 -- or less than 1% -- to return to
their Communist homelands.

  Final defections: 22,000 Communists; 22 Americans.


                                                  (February 1, 1954)

  At 8:45 one morning last week, a U.S. marine captain stared down
the frozen clay road to Panmunjom. He could make out a distant
blaze of standards, the glint of their points in the winter sun,
"Here they come," the captain's squad muttered, as the tramp of
marching feet grew loud. "All right," the captain said. "Everybody
get back and keep this road clear. These guys have been waiting a
long time for this..."

  The Chinese prisoners came in columns of five, and proudly out
of the neutral zone. The first two men flourished pictures of
Chiang Kai-shek and of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of China's
republic. The tight-drawn ranks bore red, a white and blue
Nationalist banners, the Stars and Stripes, the pale blue and white
of the U.N. Some P.W.s wielded crude, homemade flagstaffs, their
jagged points torn from beer cans. A few kept their prison camp
basketballs. One clasped a French horn. "Dear anti-Communist
comrades," boomed a loudspeaker as the P.W.s neared the edge of
freedom, "we have come here to welcome you." The P.W.s called back,
"Hsieh, hsieh (Thanks, thanks)," and their voices swelled into the
U.N. zone. The loudspeaker told them: "Please come quietly, and be
free."

  All day in the sunshine, and late into the night, 14,209 Chinese
anti-Communists poured across the line. They broke ranks to embrace
the welcomers. They passed out mimeographed pamphlets thanking
"Dear U.N. honorable fighters" for not letting them go back to
Communism.

  The U.N. liberation schedule ran smoothly, with no hint of
interference from the Communists. But on the second morning, a small
small boat laden with 50 U.S. marines slammed into an LST and sank.
Twenty-eight marines were drowned, or died from exposure.

  These U.S. marines, who were due to help convoy the Chinese P.W.s
safely to Formosa, were perhaps the last of some 7,000 U.N.
soldiers who died for the P.W.s' freedom. Of some 30,000 U.N.
soldiers killed in Korea these 7,000 were killed after the U.N.
decided to hold out as an essential condition for peace, for the
right of the P.W.s not to go back to Communism. At week's end U.N.
Commanding General John Hull gave this sacrifice due measure. The
newly liberated P.W.s said Hull, are "living symbols" that man
everywhere can escape from Communism, rely  upon U.N. support, and
find "sanctuary in the free world."