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<text> <title> (1950s) Korean War </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1950s Highlights </history> <link 11824> <link 11826> <link 11844> <link 11487> <link 15382><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> The Korean War </hdr> <body> [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 Uijongbu 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 that 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 and 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 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 divisions 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 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 war, caught up with the U.S. and with a daring champion of new ways of war, Douglas MacArthur. He had beaten the textbooks again and 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: <table> 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 </table> [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 freedom, 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 Munsan. 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 conceded 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, 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 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." </body> </article> </text>