CEASE-FIRE: Things Have Changed

When the Korean armistice talks were formally resumed last week at Panmunjom, several changes in the Communist attitude were visible. The first, and by far the most important, was that the Reds no longer insisted on the 38th parallel as a cease-fire line. Their obsession with the 38th had been the main roadblock in the way of peace last summer, before the talks were broken off.

There were other changes. The Reds now were wasting no time on political rhetoric and propaganda tirades. The atmosphere at the conference table, while not exactly jovial, was businesslike and conciliatory. At one entrance to the faded yellow tent pitched in a beanfield at Panmunjom, two Red MPs faced two U.N. MPs-symbolizing the fact that the truce area was now policed by small groups furnished equally by both sides.

Again: Item 2. After an eight-minute flight by helicopter from Munsan. Vice Admiral Charles Turner Joy faced North Korea’s dapper General Nam II for the first time in more than two months. Item 2 on the agenda-the question of the cease-fire line-was quickly handed over to a four-man subcommittee, with Major General Henry I. Hodes and Rear Admiral Arleigh (“31-Knot”) Burke negotiating for the U.N. side. Hodes and Burke proposed a line conforming fairly closely to the battlefront. but swinging a little north of it in the west, slightly south of it in the east. It would pass north of Kaesong, south of Pyonggang and Kumsong, and would touch the Japan Sea ii^ miles south of Kosong (see map). For the U.N. it would involve giving up about 200 square miles of territory in the east and taking over roughly the same amount in the west. The U.N. proposed a buffer zone four kilometers (about 2^ miles) wide straddling the line.

The Reds offered a counterproposal. They accepted the battle line as the frame of reference, but they suggested that the Eighth Army withdraw some 10 to 15 miles from hard-won positions along the central and east-central fronts. (Acceptance of this line by the U.N. would have necessitated giving up the Iron Triangle, Heartbreak Ridge and the Punchbowl.) In return the Reds offered the U.N. the useless and indefensible territory in extreme western Korea along the 38th parallel. Acceptance of this territory would have lengthened the line by more than 50 miles and thinned allied manpower to that extent.

Shaping the Position. Matt Ridgway’s men refused. A U.S. briefing officer told correspondents that while “minor adjustments” were always possible, “we will not trade territory simply to be trading.” To some, it may have seemed that Ridgway was trying to force all the concessions from the Communists while making none himself. Actually, a good many U.N. concessions, and a good deal of Communist abuse of U.N. concessions, had gone into the shaping of the U.N. position as it stood this week. The U.N. would not give up important parcels of territory won by blood and valor, and it would not regroup its army behind a poor defense line. If he wanted to get on with the ceasefire, Nam II would have to put that in his curved cigarette holder and smoke it.