The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 115: Unable to Disagree (2)
The Communist Party quickly confirmed Ridgway's prophecy. On December 12, their negotiators insisted that after the signing of the armistice, both sides should immediately release all prisoners of war.Pressed for a list of UN POWs, the Communist Party declared on December 9 that it had imprisoned 12 UN POWs (of which 18 were Americans) and 4 Korean POWs, for a total of 417.United Nations negotiators dismissed the figures as implausible.In the first months of the war, Communist radio reported that 3 people had been taken prisoner.The U.S. intelligence community estimates that the list only includes about half of the actual number of U.S. prisoners of war interned.But the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Ridgway not to reveal anything about the list to the press "to avoid stirring up emotional turmoil here (in the United States) and avoiding a situation where neither side can back down."

In contrast, the UN Army list included 132 names—474 North Koreans, 95 Chinese, and 531 former Koreans who were captured and then forced to join the enemy forces. (Another 20+ former Koreans were screened and reclassified as previously described.)
When the Communists were compelled to explain the discrepancy between the earlier announced figures of prisoners and the official list, they offered various reasons: many died of illness or from the bombing of the camps; others had been released at the front and were willing to return to the home instead of going to war.The UN Army dismissed these claims, calling the Communist list "fraudulent and dishonest" and outraged at the prospect of releasing 13 Communist prisoners of war in exchange for fewer than 12 UN soldiers.The Communist Party responded by demanding the release of 000 "reclassified" South Koreans who had once joined their army.Communist negotiators argued that the release of prisoners of war should not be a "slave trade"; the UN Army wanted to hand over some prisoners to "reliable friends" in the Republic of Korea and another part to "another friend" in Taiwan.

For General Ridgway, January 1952 was one of the most frustrating months of the war.The communists clearly did not want to bargain over the repatriation of prisoners of war, they wanted every one of their soldiers back regardless of their original nationality, and were not prepared to discuss other workarounds.President Syngman Rhee, asserting his position all the more forcefully now that peace was in sight—who had played no decision-making role in wars since the mid-1s—said to Ambassador Mucho that he had no objection to absorbing Those North Korean prisoners of war who do not want to go back, but he hopes to send a large number of Chinese back, and he does not want them to stay in South Korea indefinitely "just to eat for nothing".Chiang Kai-shek was also not enthusiastic about admitting Chinese prisoners of war to Taiwan, although he granted them the option of not returning to Communist control.Chiang Kai-shek was clearly unwilling to take the risk of incorporating thousands of loyal soldiers into his armed forces.

More distressing for Ridgway, there are signs of further compromise in the US's "firm" stance against forced repatriation. On January 1952, 1, the Joint Chiefs of Staff told him that the "final" position of the United States, approved by President Truman, was that UN forces would agree to an all-for-all exchange "so long as no forcible repatriation of prisoners of war is called for."But before bringing this position to the negotiating table, UNC negotiators must make sure that all other possibilities have been ruled out.The Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that if the loss of nearly 15 U.N. Further changes in negotiating tactics are necessary.Ridgway could read the implication: The Truman administration—that is, the president and Dean Acheson—was so eager to get out of the war that as long as the Communist Party continued to intransigence, the United States would gradually abandon its negotiating goals.Li Qiwei is actually begging to try not to disclose the negotiation situation as much as possible.Every time the Communist Party saw in the newspapers a report of a discussion by the "top decision-makers in Washington," they, without exception, waited for further concessions.Ridgway hopes that there will be no more so-called "speculation by authoritative sources" from Washington.

But in Harry Truman's view, the main obstacle to peace was not in Panmunjom, but in Moscow.The president wrote in his diary on January 1952, 1, that he had considered giving the Soviet Union "a 27-day ultimatum" that unless the Soviets urged the Chinese to reach a settlement, the United States would bomb military forces in "Manchuria." Bases, blockade of China, and if necessary a "total war" with the Soviet Union.Truman also discussed with aides the possibility of using atomic weapons if the Chinese violated any armistice agreements.

The evidence strongly supported Truman's belief that the Soviets did not want the talks to progress. In early February 1952, negotiators discussed how to form the proposed "neutral" body - which would guarantee that the armistice would not be violated.Through the State Department, the United Nations proposed to Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, and obtained the consent of the three countries.The Communist Party nominated the Soviet Union and its two satellite states, Poland and Czechoslovakia, after proposing to name the body the "Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission."The Communist delegation added nonchalantly: "If the Soviet Union cannot be nominated as a neutral country, then there will be no neutral country in the world at all." Admiral Turner Joy exclaimed furiously:

The guns, planes, tanks, mines, ammunition, fuel, trucks, and military advisers used by Communist forces in the Korean War all came from the Soviet Union.When my senior liaison officer first made contact with the communists in Kaesong, he was detained at a post with Russian machine guns and taken to the meeting place in a Russian jeep, and they even gave him a bottle of vodka .

But to Joy's great surprise, the UNC delegation was directed to oppose the Soviet Union's membership of the committee, not on the grounds that it supported North Korea in the war, but because the two countries share a common border .The Joint Chiefs of Staff told Ridgway that it would be "inappropriate" to declare that the UN Army considered the Soviet Union not neutral because evidence of Soviet participation in the war "would be very difficult to substantiate."In his reply, Ridgway complained that Washington's reluctance to explain the real reasons for excluding the Soviet Union from the committee would allow the Communist Party to spread arbitrary propaganda in praise of the Soviet Union, which he could not refute.What made Joy wrong was that the Communist Party taunted his delegation again and again: "Why can't you come up with a legitimate reason to oppose the great, peace-loving Soviet Union as a member of a neutral country? You can't come up with a reason, because you No reason. You cannot deny that the Soviet Union was a true neutral in the Korean conflict.” Even after years of reflection, Joy “could not understand the reason for such cowardice.  …” In his view, the Communist Party insisted on accepting the Soviet Being a "neutral country" is playing a "blindfold", intending to divert attention from other affairs and force the United Nations Army to make concessions.Joey and other officials also did not want Soviet observers to steal the technical secrets of American equipment as they inspected supplies into South Korea."It would be inconceivable that any country would expose its most critical military secrets to the enemy," Joy said. But the Communist Party insisted, and the fruitless haggling continued for months.

use prisoners of war
From the end of February 1952, the situation of prisoners of war became extremely dangerous. At this time, the Communist Party realized that the United States would not forcibly repatriate any prisoners of war.Truman announced the decision publicly, explaining in his memoirs: "As I have always insisted in the past, we must not abandon the South Koreans who stand on our side and on our side of liberty. I therefore now refuse to consent to Any solution to sending them back to communist areas.” On February 2, the chiefs of staff communicated this decision to Ridgway, calling it “the final position of the American government, which must be upheld,” No excuses shall be used".Ridgway was ordered to screen prisoners of war and to remove them from prisoner-of-war status for those he believed would be in danger of dying if returned to Communist control and those who strongly resisted repatriation.These reclassified persons would be held separately from other prisoners of war, and their names would be removed from the list of prisoners of war submitted to the Communist Party.The Communists would then be informed that the UN Army was ready for an all-for-all exchange on the basis of the reformulated list.The UN Army believes that this move was forced because the Communist Party does not accept voluntary repatriation on a fair basis.Now the Communist Party has made its own decision: they want to seek what they cannot get at the negotiating table by artificially creating chaos.

To give background, it is necessary to briefly outline the situation with regard to prisoners of war.A major problem arose from the fact that the UN forces took an unusually large number of prisoners of war in a very short period of time. In August 1950, the United Nations Army held fewer than 8 prisoners of war.But by November, with the invasion of Incheon and the rapid advance toward North Korea, the total number of prisoners of war had increased to more than 1.Caring for these people becomes a huge logistical and administrative problem.While the POWs were initially cooperative and undoubtedly disengaged from the fighting, placing them in the Incheon and Busan areas would have posed a security problem. In January 000, Chinese intervention drove the UN forces far south of Seoul.At this time, for security reasons, General Douglas MacArthur asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to authorize the transportation of these prisoners of war (the number was about 11 at this time) out of North Korea, and even to the United States.He said: "The prisoners of war are docile and cooperative, willing to complete all the tasks assigned." Since they are not yet adapted to the same standard of living as the Americans, they can be housed in ordinary facilities and the food can be lower than "Western standards."The Joint Chiefs of Staff declined the request for undisclosed reasons, but they did urge MacArthur to remove the prisoners from the operational area, perhaps to the Ryukyu Islands south of Okinawa.

It turned out that MacArthur was entangled in everything, and he did nothing on the POW issue until he was fired in April 1951.His successor, General Ridgway, decided to transfer the prisoners to the less desirable but readily available Geoje Island.It's an island a few miles south of the mainland, about 4 square miles in size.Geoje Island is full of barren mountains and rocks, and there is almost no flat land suitable for building a prisoner of war camp. The island is also crowded with about 150 local residents and war refugees.Li Qiwei believes that this is a "helpless choice", because there is really no other place to house these prisoners of war.

Geoje Island is truly a troublesome place made in heaven.The U.S. military police built four wide fields surrounded by barbed wire, and each field was divided into eight prisoner-of-war camps in turn. These prisoner-of-war camps were crowded with 8 Korean prisoners of war and 13 Chinese prisoners of war.Each prisoner-of-war camp was originally intended to house 2 to 700 prisoners of war, but the number of prisoners of war soon exceeded its capacity by as much as five times, and even the open space between the prisoner-of-war camps ended up being used to accommodate prisoners of war.The South Korean military also believes that Geoje Island is a convenient place to dispatch soldiers who are not qualified to fight.These extremely poor quality guards exacerbate the tension here.

In the eyes of Chinese and North Korean leaders, prisoner-of-war camps are an extension of the battlefield.Military intelligence personnel discovered from the interrogation of prisoners of war and captured documents that the Communist Party organized a special agency to lead the prisoners of war to continue fighting.The mission of the agency, which is part of the North Korean People's Army Command, was two-fold: to train agents, keep them deliberately captured so they could take on specific leadership roles in prison camps, and provide support for Communist negotiators in Panmunjom. intelligence; these agents were also specially ordered to spread propaganda among prisoners of war, to the effect that the war would end with the unification of North Korea under Communist rule, the withdrawal of the United Nations troops was imminent, and they also guaranteed that the prisoners of war would be "highly respected" when they returned to their homeland. and care” to induce their voluntary repatriation.

If persuasion is ineffective, cadres enforce discipline by beating, lynching, or even "executing" dissidents.By the beginning of 1952, the Communist Party already had a de facto shadow regime in Geoje Island, ready to move at any time.

The situation arose in February 1952, when the United Nations Guard Corps was beginning to screen prisoners of war to determine which ones would be willing to be repatriated.As Ridgway predicted, most people are unwilling to return to China or North Korea.The screening team arrived at Camp No. 2, where some 62 prisoners were housed and kept under the tight control of special cadres. When American guards entered the camp on the morning of February 5, they were attacked by approximately 600 to 2 North Koreans.They wield primitive and deadly weapons—steel-tipped poles, knives, flails, clubs, and even a homemade firearm or two.UN troops opened fire, killing 18 prisoners of war instantly (1 later) and wounding 000 others.UN losses were 1 killed and 500 wounded.

(End of this chapter)