Tug of War Over Armistice (2)
By Kim Yun-sik
On the prisoners of war (POWs) issue, the truce talks were stalled for a period of 18 months at Panmunjeom. The Korean War created a difficult problem in the handling of POWs. There were over 130,000 POWs on Geoje Island, which the U.N. used as their main prison camp.
A volatile mixture of communist and anticommunist prisoners created a situation that was ripe for the violence that rocked the camp from 1951 onward. Heavy fighting in the spring offensive of 1951 swelled the ranks of POWs under the control of U.N. forces.
By the summer, the U.N. had taken more than 160,000 POWs. North Korea had taken roughly 60,000 prisoners but of that number, 50,000 had originally been South Korean citizens and soldiers. These South Koreans had been press-ganged into the North Korean army service.
Those North Korean soldiers who had been captured by U.N. forces did not want go back to North Korea. Many of the Chinese POWs were nationalist Chinese who were forced to join the Red Army after the Chinese civil war and their dream was to not return to communism, instead choosing Taiwan.
The primary dispute was the question of voluntary versus automatic repatriation of the prisoners of war. In the Geneva Convention of 1949, Article 118 stipulates that prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of hostilities.
U.S. President Harry Truman insisted on voluntary repatriation on the basis of it being a humanitarian issue based on the memory of the bitter experience in World War II. At the war's end Allied forces forcibly turned back soldiers who had been captured by the German army to Russia, who then either executed them or sent them to gulags. As during WWII, the communists demanded an all-for-all swap without delay.
In January 1952 the U.N. introduced the doctrine of voluntary repatriation into the talks; the communists' reaction was complete shock. The screening of POWs to choose repatriation or to stay in South Korea began in early April.
No sooner had screening of prisoners of war started than prisoners launched an uprising against it. At Panmunjeom, the communists bitterly denounced the U.N. delegation and walked out, recessing the talks indefinitely.
On May 7, Compound 76, a tough group of communist prisoners led by former North Korean army Col. Lee H.K. seized Brig Gen. Francis Dodd, U.N. POW camp commander. He was responding to a POW request to discuss prison conditions and screening.
Gen. Dodd and Lt. Col. Lavin met a prisoner delegation at the compound's front gate. Discussions through the wire fence went on for more than an hour. Then a honey bucket crew came by and a guard opened the outer wire gate.
POWs suddenly grabbed Dodd and almost captured Lavin, who grabbed a gatepost and was rescued by guards. Dodd was unarmed but armed GIs protected him. He ordered his soldiers not to shoot, and Dodd was hustled away inside the wire fence of Compound 76.
The next day a new commander, Brig. Gen. Charles Colson, arrived at the U.N. POW camp. After negotiations with captors and several telephone conversations with Dodd, Colson and Dodd made a deal, accepting three conditions. Additionally, Colson stated U.N. guards had killed and wounded many prisoners of war.
Colson promised to treat the POWs according to international law and that he would conduct no more forcible screening sessions. On the evening of May 10, Dodd walked out of Compound 76. Colson had signed the statement only to recover Dodd. The communists wanted to sponsor the POW resistance and increased their influence in Panmunjeom.
Gen. Mark Clark, the U.N. commander, immediately disavowed Colson's confession. The communist delegates however, extracted every last bit of propaganda value from the document Colson had signed about a U.S. general who had openly confessed to U.N. atrocities against communist POWs.
During the war, I was assigned to serve under the POW camp commandant on Geoje Island. My mission was to serve as a liaison between the 33rd ROK Security Guard POW camp command and the U.N. POW camp command.
I also occasionally interpreted for prisoners at the U.N. camp command in several compounds including compounds 76 and 77. I would frequently watch communist prisoners defiantly waving their flags, singing and chanting with revolutionary fervor, and throwing rocks at passersby in compound 62.
One morning I happened to meet a Chinese prisoner who was serving on the garrison camp cleaning labor service. He approached me to tell me that the U.N. side should follow the Geneva Convention Article 118 and then quickly ran away from my sight. In retrospect, I am firmly convinced that the war in Korea was one fought behind barbed wire.
After much acrimonious debates, the communists accepted the principle of voluntary repatriation, but only if it included re-screening those POWs who had rejected repatriation. The agreement of POW exchange was followed the cease fire on July 27, 1953.
The first exchange, known as Little Switch, would be of sick and wounded prisoners and was held in April, there were 6,670 Chinese and Koreans going North and 684 U.N. command personal returned to South.
In the final exchange of POWs known as the Big Switch, the communists returned a total of 12,773 U.N prisoners, including 3,597 U.S., 7,862 ROK, 945 British, 229 Turks, and 140 others. The U.N. returned a total of 75,823 communist prisoners, including 70,183 North Koreans and 5,640 Chinese.
The date was finally agreed upon ― July 27, 1953, at 10 in the morning. Precisely at 10 a.m., General Harris, who replaced Admiral Joy, and General Nam Il entered from their respective sides of the building.
They both sat down at their respective tables and signed the documents in front of them. Aids exchanged copies and each signed again. The process took 12 minutes. Neither general spoke, neither offered to shake hands. They got up, looked coldly at each other and walked out.
Artillery kept firing away for another 12 hours, then the ceasefire came into effect, silence fell along the hills and valleys of central Korea and suddenly the war was over.
It had been a long and terrible war ― there were no winners but only losers in the Korean War. The scars that were left by the end of the war included military casualties on both sides of about 2.4 million and civilian casualties of about 2 million.
The two sides agreed to create a two-and-half-mile wide buffer zone between North and South Korea. The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) runs over land approximately 148 miles long. At sea, Korea is divided by the Northern Limit Line (NLL). The Demarcation Line is inside the DMZ and runs near the 38th parallel. Tensions still exist and the two sides are still technically at war.
The writer is a professor in the Asian division of the University of Maryland in Yongsan, Seoul. He can be reached at rokmankim@hotmail.com.