South Korea: A Place of 10 Million Words

Winding past Pork Chop Hill, Heartbreak Ridge, Old Baldy and other blood-drenched ground, the Military Demarcation Line runs for 151 miles across the waist of Korea. It was drawn at a cost of 1,820,000 casualties, including 33,629 U.S. dead and 103,284 wounded.

Today, ten years after the armistice of Panmunjom, the scars of fighting are partially hidden by underbrush, the trenches and foxholes have caved in, deer and an occasional bear wander where men fought and died for the three years of the Korean war.

Elbow & Shove. Though normally quiet, the line is closely guarded on one side by soldiers of Communist North Korea, on the other by the U.N. Command, made up of 600,000 South Koreans, 50,000 U.S. troops, and small detachments from Thailand and Turkey. There is still some bloodshed in the 2,000-yd.-wide demilitarized zone on either side of the line. In their ceaseless search for shell casings and scrap metal, South Korean civilians blunder into old but still murderous minefields. Red agents, trying to sneak south, are shot or captured by U.N. patrols. Last November North Korean soldiers raided an unalert U.S. post, lobbed in grenades and killed one G.I., wounded another. “There’s glamour in South Viet Nam because you fight there,” says a U.S. captain. “Here, it’s worse because you aren’t supposed to fight but you’ve got to be ready every instant. One false move and we’ve got a war on again.”

At the Joint Security Area of Panmunjom—a site a half-mile in diameter set up by the armistice, and the only place where the two sides formally come together—hostility is barely controlled. Red guards and U.S. military policemen shove and elbow each other for the right of way on sidewalks. Communists growl, “Kae seki [son of a bitch]” as they pass, spit at them or step on their toes. Reacting to such petty provocations, one 6-ft., 200-lb. U.S. Navy yeoman strolled up to a North Korean guardhouse and casually leaned against the door while the angry Communist soldiers inside tried in vain to get out.

Since the ceasefire, the Reds have called 119 meetings of the Armistice Commission, and the U.N. side 56. In a total of 800 hours, 10 million words were produced, with the Reds speaking most of them. The U.N. has accused the North Koreans of 2,275 armistice violations and they have admitted only two, both minor, the last one nine years ago. In turn, the Reds have charged 6,063 violations and the U.N. has admitted 76 —the latest being the violation of North Korean airspace by a helicopter last May. It was shot down, and the two U.S. airmen have been jailed by the Reds as spies.

Corruption & Climate. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the truce, North Korea last week held street rallies and parades, shouted slogans, and began the solemn observation of a “Month of Joint Struggle for the Withdrawal of the U.S.

Imperialist Aggressive Troops from South Korea.” The occasion is getting little recognition in South Korea, whose citizens are more concerned with their country’s chaotic politics and reeling economy; beset by crop failures, scandals and corruption, the once puritan regime of Army Strongman General Park Chung Hee is in deep trouble. But Panmunjom celebrated the anniversary in its own way by holding the 175th meeting of the Armistice Commission.

The U.N. delegation (three U.S. generals, one British and one South Korean) went through the preset motions with North Korea’s stony-faced delegates who practice the surly manners of their close ally and big brother, Red China. The two sides walked in from opposite ends of the Quonset hut that serves as conference room, sat down without greeting at the table placed squarely on the demarcation line. North Korea’s General Chang Chong Whan launched into a vituperative speech accusing the U.S. of repeatedly violating the armistice and plotting to renew the war. U.S. General George Cloud sighed wearily and doodled on a pad during the Chinese and English translations following Chang’s speech in Korean. Then Cloud ticked off Communist violations, again demanded the release of the two U.S. copter men. At one point, Cloud snapped at Chang: “You carry on like a cheap burlesque actor. Control yourself. Discipline yourself.”

So it went for 51 hours. From the conference hut, booming loudspeakers sprayed the area with the charges and countercharges. Gradually, the sizable crowd of tourists and newsmen that had gathered outside drifted away. Communist soldiers ingratiatingly offered cigarettes and candy to South Korean visitors, but when they tried to talk propaganda, American MPs moved them along. Overhead, flocks of doves, of which Koreans are particularly fond, darted about—but even they were involved in the nasty little frontier cold war. The Communists, before releasing them from the dovecot, had carefully trained the birds to perch only on their own green-painted roofs, not on the blue U.N. buildings.