The Foundation of Freedom is the Courage of Ordinary People
History On Line
BK Comment: I have been somewhat critical of previous brochures in this Army series but can only admire and recommend this one, which ably handles the task of dealing with the lost, tragic years of trying to bring an end to this vicious war by diplomatic means under the most difficult of circumstances.
Introduction
The Korean War was the first major armed clash between Free World and
Communist forces, as the so-called Cold War turned hot. The half-century that
now separates us from that conflict, however, has dimmed our collective memory.
Many Korean War veterans have considered themselves forgotten, their place in
history sandwiched between the sheer size of World War II and the fierce
controversies of the Vietnam War. The recently built Korean War Veterans
Memorial on the National Mall and the upcoming fiftieth anniversary
commemorative events should now provide well-deserved recognition. I hope that
this series of brochures on the campaigns of the Korean War will have a similar
effect.
The Korean War still has much to teach us: about military preparedness, about
global strategy, about combined operations in a military alliance facing blatant
aggression, and about the courage and perseverance of the individual soldier.
The modern world still lives with the consequences of a divided Korea and with a
militarily strong, economically weak, and unpredictable North Korea. The Korean
War was waged on land, on sea, and in the air over and near the Korean
peninsula. It lasted three years, the first of which was a seesaw struggle for
control of the peninsula, followed by two years of positional warfare as a
backdrop to extended cease-fire negotiations. The following essay is one of five
accessible and readable studies designed to enhance understanding of the U.S.
Army's role and achievements in the Korean conflict.
Years of Stalemate
July 1951-July 1953
The first twelve months of the Korean War (June 1950-June 1951) had been
characterized by dramatic changes in the battlefront as the opposing armies
swept up and down the length of the Korean peninsula. This war of movement
virtually ended on 10 July 1951, when representatives from the warring parties
met in a restaurant in Kaesong to negotiate an end to the war. Although the two
principal parties to the conflict-the governments of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (ROK or South
Korea)-were more than willing to fight to the death, their chief patrons-the
People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union on the one hand and the United
States and the United Nations (UN) on the other-were not. Twelve months of
bloody fighting had convinced Mao Tse-tung, Joseph V. Stalin, and Harry S.
Truman that it was no longer in their respective national interests to try and
win a total victory in Korea. The costs in terms of men and materiel were too
great, as were the risks that the conflict might escalate into a wider, global
conflagration. Consequently, they compelled their respective Korean allies to
accept truce talks as the price for their continued military, economic, and
diplomatic support.
For the soldiers at the front and the people back home, the commencement of
negotiations raised hopes that the war would soon be over, but such was not to
be. While desirous of peace, neither side was willing to sacrifice core
principles or objectives to obtain it. The task of finding common ground was
further complicated by the Communists' philosophy of regarding negotiations as
war by other means. This tactic significantly impeded the negotiations. And
while the negotiators engaged in verbal combat around the conference table, the
soldiers in the field continued to fight and die-for two more long and tortuous
years.
Strategic Setting
The advent of truce talks in July 1951 came on the heels of a successful
United Nations offensive that had not only cleared most of South Korea of
Communist forces but captured limited areas of North Korea as well. By 10 July
the front lines ran obliquely across the Korean peninsula from the northeast to
the southwest. In the east, UN lines anchored on the Sea of Japan about midway
between the North Korean towns of Kosong and Kansong. From there the front fell
south to the "Punchbowl," a large circular valley rimmed by jagged mountains,
before heading west across the razor-backed Taebaek Mountains to
the "Iron Triangle," a strategic communications hub around the towns of
P'yonggang, Kumhwa, and Ch'orwon. From there the front dropped south once again
through the Imjin River Valley until it reached the Yellow Sea at a point
roughly twenty miles north of Seoul. Manning this line were over 554,000 UN
soldiers-approximately 253,000 Americans (including the 1st Marine, 1st Cavalry,
and 2d, 3d, 7th, 24th, and 25th Infantry Divisions), 273,000 South Koreans, and
28,000 men drawn from eighteen countries-Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia,
Ethiopia, France, Great Britain, Greece, India, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, and the Union of
South Africa. Facing them were over 459,000 Communist troops, more than half of
whom were soldiers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Since the political leaders of the two warring coalitions had
signaled their willingness to halt the fighting, the generals on both sides
proved reluctant to engage in any major new undertakings. For the most part the
commander of UN forces, General Matthew B. Ridgway, and his principal
subordinate, General James A. Van Fleet, Eighth Army commander, confined their
activities to strengthening UN positions and conducting limited probes of enemy
lines. Their Communist counterparts adopted a similar policy. Consequently, the
two sides exchanged artillery fire, conducted raids and patrols, and
occasionally attempted to seize a mountain peak here or there, but for the most
part the battle lines remained relatively static.
So too, unfortunately, did the positions of the truce negotiators,
who were unable to make any progress on the peace front during the summer. The
chief stumbling block was the inability of the parties to agree on a cease-fire
line. The Communists argued for a return to the status quo ante- that is,
that the two armies withdraw their forces to the prewar boundary line along the
38th Parallel. This was not an unreasonable position, since the combat lines
were not all that far from the 38th Parallel. The UN, however, refused to agree
to a restoration of the old border on the grounds that it was indefensible in
many places. Current UN positions were much more defensible, and a more
defensible border was clearly advantageous, not only in protecting South Korea
in the present conflict, but in discouraging future Communist aggression.
Consequently, UN negotiators argued in favor of adopting the current line of
contact as the cease-fire line.
A deadlock immediately ensued, with the Communists employing every
conceivable artifice to undermine the UN position. They argued over every point,
large and small, procedural as well as substantive, in an effort to wear down the UN negotiators. They hurled insults
and engaged in hours of empty posturing. They released scurrilous propaganda,
staged provocative incidents, and exploited any misstep or accident on the part
of the UN to their full advantage, all in an effort to embarrass, discredit, and
entrap the UN negotiators. While more restrained in their behavior, the
American-led negotiating team refused to be intimidated by Communist negotiating
tactics. When the two sides finally tired of trading accusations, they would sit
and stare at each other over the conference table in absolute silence for hours on end. Finally, on 23 August the Communists broke off the negotiations.

Click For Full Size Color Map
Operations
The UN Summer/Fall Offensive, July-November 1951
If the Chinese and North Koreans had hoped to intimidate the United Nations
into making concessions, they were very much mistaken. Rather than rewarding
Communist misbehavior by beseeching the enemy to return to the bargaining table, the United Nations Command decided
to chastise him by launching a limited offensive in the late summer and early
fall of 1951. Militarily, the offensive was justified on the grounds that it
would allow UN forces to shorten and straighten sections of their lines, acquire
better defensive terrain, and deny the enemy key vantage points from which he
could observe and target UN positions. But the offensive also had a political
point to make-that the United Nations would not be stampeded into accepting
Communist proposals.
Much of the heaviest fighting revolved around the Punchbowl, which served as
an important Communist staging area. The United Nations first initiated limited
operations to seize the high ground surrounding the Punchbowl in late July. By
mid-August the battle had begun to intensify around three interconnected hills
southwest of the Punchbowl that would soon be known collectively as Bloody
Ridge. Three days after the Communists walked out of the Kaesong talks, the ROK
7th Division captured Bloody Ridge after a week of heavy combat. It was a
short-lived triumph, for the following day the North Koreans recaptured the
mountain in a fierce counterattack. Determined to wrest the heavily fortified
bastion from the Communists, Van Fleet ordered the U.S. 2d Infantry Division's
9th Infantry to scale the ridge. The battle raged for ten days, as the North
Koreans repulsed one assault after another by the increasingly exhausted and
depleted 9th Infantry. Finally, on 5 September the North Koreans abandoned the
ridge after UN forces succeeded in outflanking it. Approximately 15,000 North
Koreans and 2,800 UN soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured on Bloody
Ridge's slopes.

Bloody Ridge (National Archives)
After withdrawing from Bloody Ridge, the North Koreans set up new positions
just 1,500 yards away on a seven-mile-long hill mass that was soon to earn the
name Heartbreak Ridge. If anything, the enemy's defenses were even more
formidable here than on Bloody Ridge. Unfortunately, the 2d Division's acting
commander, Brig. Gen. Thomas de Shazo, and his immediate superior, Maj. Gen.
Clovis E. Beyers, the X Corps commander, seriously underestimated the strength
of the North Korean position. They ordered a lone infantry regiment-the 23d
Infantry and its attached French battalion-to make what would prove to be an
ill-conceived assault straight up Heartbreak's heavily fortified slopes.
The attack began on 13 September and quickly deteriorated into a familiar
pattern. First, American aircraft, tanks, and artillery would pummel the ridge
for hours on end, turning the already barren hillside into a cratered moonscape.
Next, the 23d's infantrymen would clamber up the mountain's rocky slopes, taking
out one enemy bunker after another by direct assault. Those who survived to reach the crest arrived
exhausted and low on ammunition. Then the inevitable counterattack would
come-wave after wave of North Koreans determined to recapture the lost ground at
any cost. Many of these counterattacks were conducted at night by fresh troops
that the enemy was able to bring up under the shelter of neighboring hills.
Battles begun by bomb, bullet, and shell were inevitably finished by grenade,
trench knife, and fist as formal military engagements degenerated into desperate
hand-to-hand brawls. Sometimes dawn broke to reveal the defenders still holding
the mountaintop. Just as often, however, the enemy was able to overwhelm the
tired and depleted Americans, tumbling the survivors back down the hill where,
after a brief pause to rest, replenish ammunition, and absorb replacements, they
would climb back up the ridge to repeat the process all over again.
And so the battle progressed-crawling up the hill, stumbling back down it,
and crawling up once again-day after day, night after night, for two weeks.
Because of the constricting terrain and the narrow confines of the objectives,
units were committed piecemeal to the fray, one platoon, company, or battalion
at a time. Once a particular element had been so ground up that it could no longer stand the strain, a
fresh unit would take its place, and then another and another until the 23d
Infantry as a whole was fairly well shattered. Finally, on 27 September the 2d
Division's new commander, Maj. Gen. Robert N. Young, called a halt to the
"fiasco" on Heartbreak Ridge as American planners reconsidered their strategy.
The 23d Infantry's failure to capture Heartbreak Ridge had not come from a
lack of valor. It took extreme bravery to advance up Heartbreak's unforgiving
slopes under intense enemy fire. And when things did not go right, it took equal
courage to take a stand so that others might live. One person who took such a
stand was Pfc. Herbert K. Pililaau, a quiet, six-foot-tall Hawaiian. Pililaau's
outfit, Company C, 1st Battalion, 23d Infantry, was clinging to a small stretch
of Heartbreak's ridge top on the night of 17 September when a battalion of North
Koreans came charging out of the darkness from an adjacent hill. The company
fought valiantly, but a shortage of ammunition soon compelled it to retreat down
the mountain. After receiving reinforcements and a new issue of ammunition, the
Americans advanced back up the ridge. North Korean fire broke the first assault,
but Company C soon regrouped and advanced again, recapturing the crest by dawn.
The pendulum of war soon reversed its course, however, and by midday the men of
Company C were once again fighting for their lives as the North Korean battalion
surged back up the hill. Running low on ammunition, the company commander called
retreat. Pililaau volunteered to remain behind to cover the withdrawal. As his
buddies scrambled to safety, Pililaau wielded his Browning automatic rifle with
great effect until he too had run out of ammunition. He then started throwing
grenades, and when those were exhausted, he pulled out his trench knife and
fought on until a group of North Korean soldiers shot and bayoneted him while
his comrades looked on helplessly from a sheltered position 200 yards down the
slope. Determined to avenge his death, the men of Company C swept back up the
mountain. When they recaptured the position, they found over forty dead North
Koreans clustered around Pililaau's corpse.
Pililaau's sacrifice had saved his comrades, and for that a grateful nation
posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor. Yet his valiant act could not alter
the tactical situation on the hill. As long as the North Koreans could continue
to reinforce and resupply their garrison on the ridge, it would be nearly
impossible for the Americans to take the mountain. After belatedly recognizing
this fact, the 2d Division crafted a new plan that called for a full division
assault on the valleys and hills adjacent to Heartbreak to cut the ridge off
from further reinforcement. Spearheading this new offensive would be the
division's 72d Tank Battalion, whose mission was to push up the Mundung-ni Valley west
of Heartbreak to destroy enemy supply dumps in the vicinity of the town of
Mundung-ni.

Heartbreak Ridge (National Archives)
It was a bold plan, but one that could not be accomplished until a way had
been found to get the 72d's M4A3E8 Sherman tanks into the valley. The only
existing road was little more than a track that could not bear the weight of the
Shermans. Moreover, it was heavily mined and blocked by a six-foot-high rock
barrier built by the North Koreans. Using nothing but shovels and explosives,
the men of the 2d Division's 2d Engineer Combat Battalion braved enemy fire to
clear these obstacles and build an improved roadway. While they worked, the
division's three infantry regiments-9th, 38th, and 23d-launched coordinated
assaults on Heartbreak Ridge and the adjacent hills. By 10 October everything
was ready for the big raid. The sudden onslaught of a battalion of tanks racing
up the valley took the enemy by surprise. By coincidence, the thrust came just
when the Chinese 204th Division was moving up to relieve the North Koreans on
Heartbreak. Caught in the open, the Chinese division suffered heavy casualties
from the American tanks. For the next five days the Shermans roared up and down
the Mundung-ni Valley, over-running supply dumps, mauling troop concentrations, and destroying
approximately 350 bunkers on Heartbreak and in the surrounding hills and
valleys. A smaller tank-infantry team scoured the Sat'ae-ri Valley east of the
ridge, thereby completing the encirclement and eliminating any hope of
reinforcement for the beleaguered North Koreans on Heartbreak.
The armored thrusts turned the tide of the battle, but plenty of hard
fighting remained for the infantry before French soldiers captured the last
Communist bastion on the ridge on 13 October. After a month of nearly continuous
combat, the 2d Division was finally king of the hill. All totaled the division
suffered over 3,800 casualties, nearly half of whom came from the 23d Infantry
and its attached French battalion. Conversely, the Americans estimated that they
had inflicted 25,000 casualties on the enemy in and around Heartbreak Ridge.
While the Punchbowl was the scene of some of the hardest fighting during the
UN's summer-fall offensive, the United Nations was not idle elsewhere. Along the
east coast South Korean troops succeeded in pushing north to the outskirts of
Kosong, while in the west five UN divisions (ROK 1st, British 1st Commonwealth,
and U.S. 1st Cavalry and 3d and 25th Infantry) advanced approximately four miles
along a forty-mile-wide front from Kaesong to Ch'orwon, thereby gaining greater security for the vital Seoul-Ch'orwon railway. By
late October UN operations had succeeded in securing most of the commanding
ground along the length of the front. The price of these gains had not been
cheap-approximately 40,000 UN casualties. Yet the enemy had suffered even more,
and the determination demonstrated by the United Nations Command in taking the
offensive was probably a key factor in persuading the Communists to return to
the bargaining table.
Renewed Talks, Diminished Fighting: The Second Korean Winter, November
1951-April 1952
On 25 October UN and Communist negotiators reconvened the truce talks at a
new location, a collection of tents in the tiny village of P'anmunjom, six miles
east of Kaesong. After some sparring, the Communists dropped their demand for a
return to the 38th Parallel and accepted the UN position that the cease-fire
line be drawn along the current line of contact. In exchange, the UN bowed to
Communist demands that a truce line be agreed upon prior to the resolution of
other outstanding issues. To avoid the danger that the Communists might stop
negotiating once a line had been established, the Americans insisted that both
sides be permitted to continue fighting until all outstanding questions had been
resolved. The two sides also agreed that the proposed armistice line would only
be valid for thirty days. Should a final truce not be arrived at within that
time, then the agreement over the line of demarcation would be invalid. Still,
the willingness of the United Nations to accept the current line of contact as
the final line of demarcation between the two Koreas represented a significant
windfall for the Communists, for it served as a fairly strong indicator that the
United Nations had no desire to press deeper into North Korea.
The termination of the UN offensive and the resumption of truce talks in late
October had a noticeably calming effect on the front. On 12 November Ridgway
instructed Van Fleet to assume an "active defense." Thereafter, offensive
operations were to be limited to those actions necessary to strengthen UN lines.
When the armistice negotiators formally embraced the line of demarcation accords
on 27 November, Van Fleet went one step further by prohibiting his subordinates
from initiating any offensive operations other than counterattacks to recapture
ground lost to an enemy attack. The Communists likewise refrained from
undertaking major actions, and the resulting lull gave the United Nations the
opportunity to accomplish a major change in battlefield lineup.

Click For Full Size Color Map
Between December 1951 and February 1952 the United States withdrew the 1st
Cavalry and 24th Infantry Divisions from Korea and replaced them with two
National Guard formations, the 40th and 45th Infantry Divisions. Ridgway had
been reluctant to make the swap, fearing that the newly trained divisions would
not be as effective as the two veteran units they were replacing. In fact, the
UN commander had recommended that the two Guard divisions be kept at their
staging areas in Japan as a source of individual replacements for the divisions
already in Korea. But Army Chief of Staff General J. Lawton Collins insisted that the National Guard divisions deploy to Korea intact.
Not to do so, Collins maintained, would trigger a rancorous public debate over
the Guard's role and fuel allegations that the Army did not trust its own
mobilization training system. Fortunately the changeover went smoothly, and soon
the two new divisions-which largely consisted of draftees led by a cadre of
National Guardsmen-were performing just as well as the Regular units they had
replaced, units that by this time in the war likewise contained large numbers of
replacements and draftees.

P'anmunjom truce tents (National Archives)
While the Army realigned its order of battle, the P'anmunjom negotiators
struggled to finalize the truce agreement in time to meet the thirty-day
deadline. When they failed in this, they agreed to extend the deadline by an
additional two weeks, but this deadline also came and went without noticeable
progress. By this point, however, winter had fully set in, making a renewal of
major operations problematic at best. Raids and patrols continued, if for no
other reason than to prevent inaction from dulling the troops' combat edge, but
overall the level of combat was minimal. The decline in activity was accompanied
by a precipitous drop in UN casualties, from about 20,000 during the month of
October to under 3,000 per month between December 1951 and April 1952. All in
all, the commanders on both sides seemed content to sit out the winter and let
the negotiators do the heavy fighting. And fight they did.
Although a number of issues separated UN and Communist negotiators, the chief
stumbling block to the arrangement of a final armistice during the winter of
1951-1952 revolved around the exchange of prisoners. At first glance, there
appeared to be nothing to argue about, since the Geneva Conventions of 1949, by
which both sides had pledged to abide, called for the immediate and complete
exchange of all prisoners upon the conclusion of hostilities. This seemingly
straightforward principle, however, disturbed many
Americans. To begin with, UN prisoner-of-war (POW) camps held over 40,000
South Koreans, many of whom had been impressed into Communist service and who
had no desire to be sent north upon the conclusion of the war. Moreover, a
considerable number of North Korean and Chinese prisoners had also expressed a
desire not to return to their homelands. This was particularly true of the
Chinese POWs, some of whom were anti-Communists whom the Communists had forcibly
inducted into their army. Many Americans recoiled at the notion of returning
such men into the hands of their oppressors, and for several months American
policymakers wrestled with the POW question.

Winter in Korea (National Archives)
Acquiescing to a total exchange of prisoners as called for by the Geneva
Conventions would quickly settle the issue and pave the way for a final
agreement ending the hostilities. On the other hand, the desire of enemy
soldiers not to return to their homelands was clearly a useful propaganda weapon
for the West in the wider Cold War.
Establishing the right of prisoners to chose their own destinies might also
pay significant dividends in any future war with the Communists, as many enemy
soldiers might desert or surrender if they knew that they would not be forced to
return to their Communist-controlled homelands afterward. But no one suffered
any delusion about how the Communists would react to the voluntary repatriation
concept. The newly established governments of North Korea and the People's
Republic of China were extremely sensitive to anything that even remotely
challenged their legitimacy. This was especially true of the Communist Chinese
government in Peking, which would undoubtedly recoil at the suggestion that some
of its former soldiers be turned over to its mortal enemy, the rival Chinese
Nationalist government on Taiwan. Clearly then, any attempt to assert voluntary
repatriation would complicate the truce negotiations and prolong the war.
Ultimately, it was the moral aspect of the question which decided President
Harry S. Truman. In the name of allied amity, President Truman had dutifully
repatriated Soviet citizens who had fallen into American hands after World War
II. Much to his dismay, the Soviet government had mistreated, imprisoned, or
even killed many of the returnees. Truman had no desire to repeat this
heart-wrenching experience if he could avoid it. In a war that was being fought
in the name of national self-determination and human liberty, he found it
unconscionable to forcibly return people to totalitarian societies.
Consequently, after much soul searching, Truman made voluntary repatriation a
central tenet of America's negotiating position in February 1952.
Truman's decision met with cries of anger from the Communists, who accused
the United States of violating the Geneva accords, despite the fact that they
themselves routinely violated that treaty's most basic precepts regarding the
treatment of prisoners. Undaunted, the United Nations proceeded to lay the
groundwork for allowing anti-Communist prisoners to avoid involuntary
repatriation. To begin with, it reclassified the more than 40,000 South Koreans
being held in UN compounds as "civilian internees" rather than prisoners of war,
a categorization that would allow them to be eventually released in the South.
Next, the United Nations began to screen all of its prisoners to identify those
who wished to return to their homelands after the war and those who did not. The
screening process aggravated tensions inside the POW camps, which were already
the site of frequent altercations between pro- and anti-Communist prisoners.
Guided by Communist agents who had deliberately allowed themselves to be
captured in order to infiltrate the camps, pro-Communist prisoners staged a
series of increasingly violent uprisings during the spring of 1952, much to the
embarrassment of UN officials. Nevertheless, the screenings continued, and in
April 1952 UN officials revealed the results-only 70,000 of the 170,000 civil
and military prisoners then held by the United Nations wished to return to North
Korea and the People's Republic of China.

Repatriation screening of Communist POWs. 1952 (National
Archives)
The results of the initial survey stunned Communist and UN officials alike.
While the Communists were willing to accept the reclassification of South
Koreans who had served in their ranks as civilian internees, the sheer number of
POWs who purportedly wished to avoid repatriation represented an affront that
they dared not ignore. The report thus drove the Communists to dig in their
heels even further on the repatriation question, and they refused to accept
anything short of a complete return of all of their nationals to their control.
Conversely, the survey also served to lock the United Nations into its position.
Having asserted the principle of voluntary repatriation and demonstrated that a
large number of individuals wished to take advantage of it, any retreat would
represent a major political and moral defeat for the UN. With neither side
willing to compromise, the armistice talks became hopelessly deadlocked over the
POW question.
To gain additional leverage on this issue, Communist authorities instructed
their agents in the POW camps to step up their disruptive activities. Armed with
a startling array of homemade weapons, pro-Communist elements deftly employed
intimidation and violence to gain control of the interiors of many POW camps.
Then, in early May, Communist prisoners scored a stunning coup when they
succeeded in capturing Brig. Gen. Francis T. Dodd, the commandant of the UN's
main POW camp on Koje-do. To achieve his release, American authorities pledged
to suspend additional repatriation screenings in a poorly worded communique that
seemed to substantiate Communist allegations that the UN had heretofore been
mistreating prisoners. The episode humiliated the United Nations Command and
handed Communist negotiators and propagandists alike a new weapon that they
wielded with great zeal, both within the negotiating tent and on the larger
stage of world public opinion.
A Return to War: The Summer/Fall Campaigns, May-November 1952
As positions at the negotiating table hardened, spring thaws offered the
prospect for renewed military operations. Neither side, however, showed much
enthusiasm for such undertakings. Since the tempo of the war had first begun to
ebb after the initiation of truce talks in July 1951, both sides had expended
enormous amounts of effort to solidify their frontline positions. The United
Nations' main line consisted of a nearly unbroken line of bunkers, trenches, and
artillery emplacements that stretched for over one hundred fifty miles from one
coast of Korea to the other. Communist defenses were even more impressive.
Because of their overall inferiority in firepower, the Chinese and North Koreans
had taken extraordinary efforts to harden their positions. They burrowed deep
into the sides of mountains, creating intricate warrens of tunnels and caves
capable of housing entire battalions of infantry. Communist bunkers were often
more solidly built than UN emplacements and were usually impervious to anything
but a direct hit by bomb or shell. They were also generally better sited than UN
bunkers and better concealed to avoid the prying eyes of hostile aviators,
something UN soldiers did not have to worry about. Finally, the Communists built
in greater depth than their adversaries, not just below ground, but on top of
it, as they typically extended their fortifications up to twenty miles behind
their front line. These emplacements were manned by over 900,000 men,
approximately 200,000 more soldiers than the United Nations had under arms in
Korea. Over the winter the Communists had also more than doubled the number of
artillery pieces they had on the front lines, while the static nature of the war
had likewise permitted them to improve their overall supply situation,
notwithstanding the best efforts of UN aviators to interdict Communist supply
lines. Thus, by the spring of 1952 the UN faced a well-trained, battle-hardened,
robust opponent who could not be easily defeated.
Since both sides had already indicated their willingness to settle the
conflict roughly along the current front lines, neither side had any incentive
to risk a major offensive against the other. This was especially true for the UN
commanders, who unlike their totalitarian adversaries always had to keep public
opinion foremost in their minds. Too many friendly casualties could undermine
support for the war at home and force the United Nations to acquiesce to
Communist demands at the negotiating table. Consequently, General Mark W. Clark,
who replaced General Ridgway as overall UN commander in mid-1952, kept UN
offensive operations to a minimum to avoid unnecessary losses. The Communists,
for whom human casualties were of less consequence, likewise eschewed the big
offensive in the belief that they could just as easily erode the UN's will to
continue the struggle through the daily grind of trench warfare. Raids, patrols,
bombardments, and limited objective attacks thus remained the order of the day,
as both sides contented themselves with making light jabs at their adversary
rather than attempting to land a knockout blow.
The absence of grand offensives and sweeping movements notwithstanding,
service at the front was just as dangerous in 1952 as it had been during the
more fluid stages of the war. By June Communist guns were hurling over 6,800
shells a day at UN positions. During particularly hotly contested actions,
Communist gunners occasionally fired as many as 24,000 rounds a day. UN
artillerists repaid the compliment five-, ten-, and sometimes even twenty-fold,
and still not a day went by when Communist and UN soldiers did not clash
somewhere along the front line.
One of the most common missions performed by UN infantrymen was the small
raid for the purpose of capturing enemy prisoners for interrogation. These
operations were usually launched at night and were extremely dangerous-indeed,
relatively few succeeded in capturing any prisoners. At this level, the war was
a very personal affair-it was man against man, rifle against grenade, fist
against knife. Small-unit fights required a great deal of courage, and sometimes
the bravest men were those who did not carry a rifle at all-the medics. One such
man was Sgt. David B. Bleak, a medical aidman attached to the 40th Infantry
Division's 223d Infantry.
On 14 June 1952, Sergeant Bleak volunteered to accompany a patrol that was
going out to capture enemy prisoners from a neighboring hill. As the patrol approached its objective the enemy detected it and
laid down an intense stream of automatic weapons and small-arms fire. After
attending to several soldiers cut down in the initial barrage, Sergeant Bleak
resumed advancing up the hill with the rest of the patrol. As he neared the
crest, he came under fire from a small group of entrenched enemy soldiers.
Without hesitation, he leapt into the trench and charged his assailants, killing
two with his bare hands and a third with his trench knife. As he emerged from
the emplacement, he saw a concussion grenade fall in front of a comrade and used
his body to shield the man from the blast. He then proceeded to administer to
the wounded, even after being struck by an enemy bullet. When the order came to
pull back, Sergeant Bleak ignored his wound and picked up an incapacitated
companion. As he moved down the hill with his heavy burden, two enemy soldiers
bore down on him with fixed bayonets. Undaunted, Bleak grabbed his two
assailants and smacked their heads together before resuming his way back down
the mountain carrying his wounded comrade.
Sergeant Bleak's actions were so distinctive that June day that they won him
one of the 131 Medals of Honor awarded during the Korean War. Yet a day did not
go by in which some American soldier did not risk his life for his comrades on
some nameless Korean hillside. This was particularly true for those soldiers
assigned to the outpost line-a string of strongpoints several thousand yards to
the front of the UN's main battle positions. The typical outpost consisted of a
number of bunkers and interconnecting trenches ringed with barbed wire and mines
perched precariously on the top of a barren, rocky hill. As the UN's most
forward positions, the outposts acted as patrol bases and early warning
stations. They also served as fortified outworks that controlled key terrain
features overlooking UN lines. As such, they represented the UN's first line of
defense and were accorded great importance by UN and Communist commanders alike.
Not surprisingly, the outposts were the scenes of some of the most vicious
fighting of the war. While most of these actions were on a small scale, some of
the biggest battles of 1952 revolved around efforts either to establish, defend,
or retake these outposts.
Operation Counter provides one example of some of the larger outpost battles.
During Counter the 45th Infantry Division sought to establish twelve new
outposts on high ground overlooking the division's main battle line outside of
Ch'orwon. The division easily seized eleven of its twelve objectives during a
night assault on 6 June, with the twelfth falling into American hands six days
later during a second-phase attack. But if capturing the new outposts had been
relatively easy, holding them would not be. The Chinese reacted violently to the
American initiative, and by the end of June the 45th Division had repulsed more
than twenty Communist counterattacks on the newly established positions. Still
the enemy came, and in mid-July his persistence paid off when Chinese troops
succeeded in pushing elements of the 2d Infantry Division off one of these
outposts-a key mountain nine miles west of Ch'orwon known as Old Baldy. Two
companies from the 23d Infantry recaptured the hill after bitter hand-to-hand
fighting on 1 August, but in mid-September the enemy again seized the hill, only
to lose it several days later to a determined counterattack made by the 38th
Infantry and a platoon of tanks.
The savage, seesaw struggle atop Old Baldy was repeated in one way or another
on countless mountain peaks and ridges during 1952, as the two sides struggled
to gain ascendancy over the rugged no-man's-land that separated their respective
battle lines. The heavy casualties incurred in these bitter outpost battles
discouraged General Clark from authorizing any new offensives after Operation
Counter. This defensive-mindedness rankled General Van Fleet, who believed that
the high casualties the United Nations was experiencing were due in part to the
UN's allowing the enemy to launch attacks when and where he wished. Van Fleet
therefore pressed Clark to authorize additional limited offensives that would
allow UN forces to regain the initiative from the enemy and compel him to fight
on American terms.
One potential candidate for such an operation was Triangle Hill, a mountain
three miles north of Kumhwa. The United Nations was suffering heavy casualties
in the area on account of the proximity of the opposing battle lines, which in
some cases lay only 200 yards apart. Seizing Triangle Hill and its
neighbor-Sniper Ridge-would force the enemy to fall back over 1,200 yards to the
next viable defensive position, thereby strengthening UN dominance over the
sector and reducing friendly casualties. Finally, an offensive would also serve
a political purpose. On 8 October UN negotiators had walked out of the armistice
talks out of frustration over being unable to reach an accommodation with the
enemy on the prisoner issue. With the talks now officially recessed and no hope
in sight for a resolution of the conflict, a demonstration of UN resolve seemed
in order. Van Fleet was confident that, given sufficient support, two infantry
battalions would be able to capture the Triangle Hill complex in just five days
with about 200 casualties. Swayed by Van Fleet's arguments, Clark agreed to
authorize the attack.
On 14 October, 280 artillery pieces and over 200 fighter-bomber sorties began
pummeling Triangle Hill. Unfortunately, Communist defenses proved tougher than expected, and reinforcements had to be funneled
in-first one battalion, then another, and another. When the smoke finally
cleared several weeks later, two UN infantry divisions (the U.S. 7th and the ROK
2d) had suffered over 9,000 casualties in an ultimately futile attempt to
capture Triangle Hill. Estimates of Chinese casualties exceeded 19,000 men, but
the Communists had the manpower for such fights and did not flinch from flinging
men into the breach to hold key terrain. The United Nations did not have such
resources.

Soldiers of Battery C, 936th Field Artillery Batt
Below:
Artillery may have dominated
the battlefield, but ultimately it was infantry that captured and held ground.
Here, Company F, 9th Infantry, advances in central Korea. (National
Archives)

The Third Korean Winter, December 1952-April 1953
By the time the battles for Triangle Hill and Sniper Ridge had wound down in
mid-November, both sides had begun the now familiar pattern of settling down for
yet another winter in Korea. As temperatures dropped so too did the pace of
combat. Still, shelling, sniping, and raiding remained habitual features of life
at the front, as did patrol and guard duty, so that even the quietest of days
usually posed some peril. For most frontline soldiers, home was a "hootchie,"
the name soldiers gave to the log and earth bunkers that were the mainstay of UN
defenses in Korea. Built for the most part into the sides of hills, the typical
hootchie housed from two to seven men. Each bunker was usually equipped with a
single automatic weapon which could be fired at the enemy through above-ground
firing ports. Inside, candles and lamps shed their pale light on the
straw-matted floors and pinup-bedecked walls of the cramped, five-by-eight-foot
areas that comprised a hootchie's living quarters. Oil, charcoal, or wood stoves
provided heat, bunk beds made of logs and telephone wire offered respite, and
boxes of extra ammunition and hand grenades gave comfort to the men for whom
these humble abodes were home. However Spartan, the hootchie provided welcome
shelter from the daily storms of bomb, bullet, rain, and snow that raged
outside.
Keeping up morale is difficult in any combat situation, but when the fighting
devolves into a prolonged stalemate, it is particularly hard to maintain.
Consequently, the Army developed an extensive system of personnel and unit
rotations to combat soldier burnout and fatigue. Rotation began in a modest way
at the small-unit level, where many companies established warm-up bunkers just
behind the front lines. Every three or four days a soldier could expect a short
respite of a few hours' duration back at the warm-up bunker. There he would be
able to spend his time as he saw fit, reading, writing letters, washing clothes,
or getting a haircut. When operations were not pressing, many companies also
arranged to send a dozen or so men at a time somewhat farther to
the rear for a 24-hour rest period. The ultimate rest and recuperation (R and
R) program, however, was a five-day holiday in Japan that Eighth Army tried to
arrange for every soldier on an annual basis.
Eighth Army complemented these individual R and R activities with an
extensive unit rotation program. Companies regularly rotated their constituent
platoons between frontline and reserve duty. Similarly, battalions rotated their
companies, regiments rotated their battalions, divisions rotated their
regiments, and corps rotated their divisions, all to ensure that combat units
periodically had a chance to rest, recoup, retrain, and absorb replacements.
Last but not least, the Army maintained a massive individual replacement program
in an effort to equalize as much as possible the burdens of military service
during a limited war.

A soldier from the 180th Infantry mans a machine gun from
inside a bunker;
Below, living quarters inside a "hootchie."
(National Archives)
In September 1951 the Army had introduced a point system that tried to take
into account the nature of individual service when determining eligibility for
rotation home to the United States. According to this system, a soldier earned
four points for every month he served in close combat, two points per month for
rear-echelon duty in Korea, and one point for duty elsewhere in the Far East.
Later, an additional category-divisional reserve status-was established at a
rate of three points per month. The Army initially stated that enlisted men
needed to earn forty-three points to be eligible for rotation back to the
States, while officers required fifty-five points. In June 1952 the Army reduced
these requirements to thirty-six points for enlisted men and thirty-seven points
for officers. Earning the required number of points did not guarantee instant
rotation; it only meant that the soldier in question was eligible to go home.
Nevertheless, most soldiers did return home shortly after they met the
requirement.
The point system was a marvelous palliative to flagging spirits, as it gave
every soldier a definite goal in an otherwise indefinite and seemingly goalless
war. Every man knew that typical frontline duty would enable him to return home
after about a year of service in Korea. The system also helped boost the spirits
of loved ones back home. This was of some consequence in helping to maintain
public support for what was an increasingly unpopular war. Yet for all of its
psychological and political benefits, the program was not without its costs. The
constant turnover generated by the policy-approximately 20,000 to 30,000 men per
month-was terribly inefficient from the vantage point of manpower administration
and created tremendous strains on the Army's personnel and training systems. The
program also hurt military proficiency by increasing personnel turbulence and by
producing a continuous drain on skilled manpower. No sooner had a soldier become fully acclimatized to the physical, mental, and technical
demands of Korean combat than he was rotated home, only to be replaced by a
green recruit who lacked these skills. This was true not only of the enlisted
men, who were rushed to the front with little or no field training, but of the
officers as well. Indeed, by the fall of 1952 most junior officers with World
War II combat experience had been rotated home and replaced by recent Reserve
Officers' Training Corps graduates who had neither command nor combat
experience. In a sinister twist, the system also reduced the effectiveness of
many veteran soldiers, who became progressively more cautious and unreliable in
combat as their eligibility for rotation neared. All of this meant that combat
proficiency tended to stagnate in American units during the course of the war.
This contrasted sharply with those Communist units that had avoided heavy
casualties and managed to keep their morale intact. In these units battlefield
acumen steadily increased as the war progressed thanks to the Communists' rather
Draconian personnel policies. In the Red Army, victory or death were the only
ways home.
The disparity in combat experience between the typical American and Communist
combat unit was just one factor that contributed to the Eighth Army's heavy
reliance on air and artillery support. Political sensitivity at home to the
war's mounting body count, the stagnant, siege-like nature of the war, and a
natural desire on the part of commanders to spare the lives of their men also
contributed to the United Nations Command's preference for expending metal
rather than blood. The Communists understood the terrible power of America's
industrial might and attempted to compensate for it in a variety of ways. They
steadily increased the size of their own artillery park until it exceeded that
of the UN's, though they never managed to match the technical proficiency and
ammunition reserves enjoyed by American artillerists. They dug deep, moved at
night, and became masters of the arts of infiltration, deception, and surprise,
all to minimize their vulnerability to the awesome destructive power wielded by
the UN's air, land, and naval forces. Yet when push came to shove, the
Communists also had the political will, the authoritarian control, and the
manpower reserves to indulge in human wave attacks. American industrial might
could and did obliterate many such attacks, but ultimately it was the infantry
who held ground, and, when the Communists wanted a piece of terrain badly
enough, they generally had the human wherewithal to take it.
The Final Summer, May-July 1953
The year 1953 found 768,000 UN soldiers facing over one million Communist
troops along battle lines that had not materially changed for nearly two years. Spring thaws brought the customary increase in military
activity, as Communist soldiers emerged from their winter dens to probe UN
outposts. But the new year also brought with it some fresh developments on the
political and diplomatic fronts-developments that would dramatically alter the
annual rites of spring at the battlefront.
In January 1953 Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeded Harry S. Truman as President
of the United States. Eisenhower's ascension to the presidency created an air of
uncertainty among Communist leaders. Though he had campaigned on a platform
promising to end the war, some Communists feared that Eisenhower, a former
five-star general whose Republican Party contained some rabidly hawkish
elements, might seek to end the war by winning it.
Communist uncertainty about the future increased in March, when one of North
Korea's preeminent patrons, Soviet leader Joseph V. Stalin, died. Stalin's death
triggered a succession struggle inside the Soviet Union. Preoccupied with their
own political affairs, Kremlin leaders sought to minimize Soviet involvement in
potentially destabilizing activities in the outside world. Chief among these was
the war in Korea which, should it escalate, might lead to a direct conflict with
the United States-a conflict which the inward-looking Soviets desperately wanted
to avoid. Consequently, shortly after Stalin's death, Soviet officials began to
signal a new interest in seeing the Korean conflict put to rest. These
sentiments were echoed by Mao, who likewise found that the conflict in Korea was
detracting from his ability to address pressing domestic issues inside the newly
formed People's Republic of China.
The convergence of these events- the death of Stalin, the ascension of
Eisenhower, and the growing desire on the part of all sides to find a way out of
a seemingly unending and unprofitable conflict- created an environment conducive
to a settlement of the Korean imbroglio. On 26 April UN and Communist
negotiators returned to the truce tent at P'anmunjom after a six-month hiatus.
This time Communist negotiators expressed a willingness to allow prisoners of
war to decide whether or not they wanted to return to their homelands. This key
concession opened the door to fruitful negotiations. As a goodwill measure, both
sides quickly agreed to an immediate exchange of sick and wounded prisoners. The
exchange (dubbed Operation Little Switch) resulted in the repatriation of 684 UN
and 6,670 Communist personnel. The two parties then sat down to the laborious
task of hammering out all of the many technical details pertaining to the actual
implementation of a cease-fire and a final, full exchange of prisoners. Even at
this late date, American negotiators found that their Communist counterparts
were determined to seek every possible advantage, and the talks dragged on, week
after week, month after month.
In June South Korean President Syngman Rhee, who opposed any resolution of
the conflict that left North Korea in Communist hands, jarred negotiators on
both sides when he unilaterally released about 25,000 North Korean prisoners who
had previously voiced a desire to remain in South Korea after the war. The
release, which Rhee thinly disguised as a prison "breakout," angered American
and Communist negotiators alike and temporarily disrupted the negotiations. Yet
the act also helped the North Korean government save face, for by allowing many
anti-Communist North Koreans to "escape," South Korea spared the North Korean
government some of the embarrassment of having to admit that a large number of
its captured soldiers did not want to return home. Thus, after some compulsory
sputtering, the Communists chose to remain at the negotiating table, and the
talks proceeded despite Rhee's attempts at disruption.
One might have expected that the Communists' newfound interest in seeking a
cessation of hostilities would have translated to inaction on the battlefield,
especially as prospects for a final settlement became progressively more
imminent. Unfortunately, such was not the case. Rather, the Communists chose to
increase the tempo of the war. In part the heightened activity reflected the
natural desire of Communist generals to secure the best possible ground before
the armistice went into effect. But the Communist offensives of the spring and
summer of 1953 also served a broader political purpose. Ever mindful of the
wider propaganda aspects of the struggle between East and West, the Communists
were determined to end the war on a positive note. A final offensive that seized
additional territory would give the Communists the opportunity to portray
themselves as victors whose martial prowess had finally compelled the United
Nations to sue for peace. Such claims would also allow Communist propagandists
to paper over some of the more bitter pills the Communists would have to swallow
in the upcoming accords.
Communist military activity had begun in early March with company-size probes
of various UN frontline positions. By mid-month the Chinese had escalated to
battalion-size attacks. After a failed attempt to capture a UN hill outpost
nicknamed "Little Gibraltar," the Chinese turned their gaze onto one of the
central battlefields of the previous year-Old Baldy. On the evening of 23 March
a Chinese battalion supported by mortar and artillery fire overran a Colombian
company on Old Baldy. Repeated efforts by the 7th Infantry Division to regain
the mountain failed to dislodge the Chinese, who were determined to
cling to the pulverized rock regardless of the cost. Although the UN had
killed or wounded two to three Chinese for every UN soldier lost on Old Baldy,
General Maxwell D. Taylor, who had recently replaced Van Fleet as Eighth Army
commander, decided that the mountain was not worth additional UN lives, and on
30 March he suspended UN efforts to retake the hill.
7th Infantry Division trenches, July 1953 (National Archives)
April brought a lull in Communist activities, but in May the front began to
heat up as company and battalion attacks gave way to regimental-size assaults.
Then in June, as the P'anmunjom negotiators sat down to draw up a final
cease-fire line, the enemy launched a major, three-division offensive against
the ROK II Corps in the vicinity of Kumsong. The Chinese succeeded in pushing
the South Koreans back about three miles before the front restabilized, a
significant advance after two years of stagnant trench warfare. Elsewhere UN
forces largely succeeded in repulsing more limited Communist attacks, and by the end of
June the intensity of the fighting had once again subsided. The Communists,
however, were by no means done. After consolidating their gains and bringing up
additional supplies and reinforcements, the Communists launched what was to be
their biggest offensive operation since the spring of 1951.

Click For Full Size Color Map
The offensive began on 6 July. After hammering South Korean lines south of
the Iron Triangle, the Chinese turned their attention to Pork Chop Hill, a
company-size 7th Division outpost that over the past year had seen about as much fighting as its neighboring peak, Old Baldy.
Following a ferocious artillery and mortar barrage, wave after wave of Chinese
infantrymen stormed up Pork Chop Hill. Backed by some heavy artillery fire of
their own, the beleaguered defenders valiantly held on. Both sides funneled in
reinforcements, with the Chinese committing a new battalion for every fresh
company the Americans sent in. By 11 July General Taylor reluctantly decided to
abandon Pork Chop Hill. As had been the case on Old Baldy, Taylor could not
justify risking more lives for a hill that was of minimal strategic significance, especially given the fact that an armistice was just
around the corner.
Communist commanders operated under a different calculus-one that held
potentially unnecessary losses of life to no account. Two days after Taylor
withdrew from Pork Chop Hill, six Chinese divisions slammed into UN lines south
of Kumsong. The ROK II Corps once again bore the brunt of the assault, falling
back in confusion for eight miles before regrouping along the banks of the
Kumsong River. UN counterattacks regained some of this lost ground, but there
seemed little point in pressing the issue. On 20 July the negotiators reached an
armistice agreement which they signed seven days later in a ceremony at
P'anmunjom. At 2200 on 27 July 1953, an eery silence fell across the front. The
Korean War was over.
Analysis
The last two months of the war had been some of the most horrific of the
entire conflict. In less than sixty days Communist artillery had fired over
800,000 rounds at UN positions, while UN artillery had repaid the favor nearly
sevenfold, sending over 4.7 million shells back at their tormentors.
Approximately 100,000 Communist and nearly 53,000 UN soldiers were killed,
captured, or wounded during those final two months of combat. For their trouble
the Communists had gained a few miles of mountainous terrain and some grist for
their propaganda mills, but these gains could not mask the speciousness of
Communist claims that they had won the war.
In truth, the Korean War had been rather inconclusive. Under the leadership
of the United States, the United Nations had successfully defended the
sovereignty of a free and democratically elected government from totalitarianism
while simultaneously demonstrating the ability of the international community to
stand up effectively against aggression. On the other hand, UN action had been
possible only because the Soviet Union had chosen to walk out of the UN Security
Council in 1950, a costly miscalculation that the Soviets were unlikely to
repeat in the future. Nor had the UN been able to obtain its optimistic goal of
liberating North Korea.

Lt. Gen. William K. Harrison, Jr., U.S. Army and Lt. Gen. Nam
Il, North Korean People's Army, sign the armistice agreement on 27 July
1953. (National Archives)
From the Communist viewpoint, the war likewise brought mixed results. Not
only had the North Koreans failed to conquer the South, but they had actually
suffered a net loss of 1,500 square miles of territory as the price of their
aggression. On the other hand, the Communists had successfully rebuffed UN
attempts to liberate the North, while the conflict had propelled the young
People's Republic of China to a place of prominence on the world stage. Finally, for good or ill,
the war had calcified Cold War animosities and fueled a wider geopolitical
confrontation between East and West that would dominate world affairs for the
next forty years. Thus the Korean conflict would have great repercussions,
despite the fact that little territory changed hands as a result of it.
Perhaps the greatest repercussions of the Korean conflict, however, were the
effects the war had on the human beings it touched-the soldiers it maimed, the
civilians it displaced, and the families around the world who lost their sons
and brothers, fathers and lovers to bomb, bullet, and shell. For the Korean War
was as bloody as it was inconclusive. United Nations forces suffered over
559,000 casualties during the war, including approximately 94,000 dead.
America's share of this bill totaled 36,516 dead and 103,284 wounded. The enemy
had taken prisoner 7,245 Americans during the war. The UN estimated that Communist military casualties exceeded two million dead,
wounded, and prisoners. Civilian losses were even more appalling-approximately
one million South Korean and up to two million North Korean civilians either
died, disappeared, or were injured during the course of the war, while millions
more became refugees.
While territorial losses and disproportionate casualties belied Communist
claims of victory, no facet of the war exposed the bankruptcy of communism more
clearly than the prisoner issue. In accordance with the final armistice
agreement, both sides directly exchanged all prisoners who desired to return to
their homelands. All told, 75,823 Communist and 12,773 UN personnel (including
3,597 Americans) returned home from captivity under this arrangement (Operation
Big Switch). Prisoners who had expressed a desire not to be repatriated were
sent to a temporary camp at P'anmunjom. There government representatives were
allowed to talk with their respective nationals under the impartial supervision
of a five-member Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission. The interviews served
to ensure that soldiers had not been coerced into refusing repatriation. They
also gave the governments involved the opportunity to try and persuade their
nationals to return home. When the interviews were over, each man was free to
chose whether or not he wanted to return home. The numbers were revealing. Of
the 359 UN personnel sent to the camp, ten decided to come home, two decided to
go to neutral third countries, and the remainder-347-decided to live among the
Communists. Included among these were twenty-one Americans who chose to remain
with their captors. In contrast, 22,604 Communist soldiers initially chose not
to be repatriated. After being processed by the Repatriation Commission, 628
relented and returned home. The rest-over 21,000 Chinese and North Koreans-chose
to remain in the non-Communist world, with the Koreans going to South Korea and
the Chinese to Nationalist-controlled Taiwan. When added to the roughly 25,000
North Koreans Rhee had freed in June, this meant that over 46,000 Communist
soldiers had refused repatriation. No better testimony as to the merits of life
under communism existed than this.
The United States had taken a noble stand in asserting that prisoners had a
right not to return to societies they found objectionable, but the price of
establishing this principle had been high. After the P'anmunjom negotiators had
agreed to use the line of contact as a cease-fire line in November 1951, the
repatriation question had been the only substantial issue over which the two
sides remained at loggerheads. By insisting on voluntary repatriation-a right
that had heretofore not existed in international law-the United States had adopted a
course that had prolonged the war by fifteen months, during which 125,000 United
Nations and over 250,000 Communist soldiers had become casualties. The 46,000
Chinese and North Koreans who escaped communism as a result of American
opposition to forcible repatriation had truly been given a precious, if dearly
bought, gift.
Yet the nonrepatriates were not the only ones to have benefited from
America's willingness to fight for principles in which it believed. In Korea,
the real struggle had never been about the control of this hill or that hill.
Rather, it had been about the principles of national self-determination and of
freedom from oppression. By successfully defending the fledgling Republic of
Korea, the American GI, together with his comrades in arms from South Korea and
eighteen other nations, had secured the freedom of millions of South Korean
civilians from Communist oppression.
This was a great achievement, but it was not a job that, once done, could
stand by itself. For while the armistice of 27 July 1953 ended the fighting in
Korea, it had not truly ended the war. The armistice was just that-a temporary
cease-fire-and not a treaty of peace. It reflected the realization by all
parties that neither side had either the will or the means to compel the other
to bow to its political agenda. Hence the warring parties had agreed to
disagree-to stop the shooting and to transfer the war from the battlefield to
the diplomatic field. There the conflict has remained, despite sporadic
incidents and border clashes, for half a century.
The inability of the two sides to resolve their differences has meant that
the two Koreas and their allies have had to remain on a war footing along the
inter-Korean border ever since. Fifty years after the North Korean invasion,
Communist and United Nations soldiers still glare at each other across the
demilitarized zone established in July 1953. Together with the South Koreans,
U.S. Army troops continue to make up the bulk of the UN contingent in Korea. The
burdens of protecting South Korea from the threat of renewed Communist
aggression over the past half-century have been great for the United States.
Billions of dollars have been spent and some additional lives have been lost,
the latter as a result of sporadic Communist violations of the cease-fire. Yet
by standing unswervingly behind its commitments, the United States in
general-and the millions of men and women of the United States armed forces who
have served their country in Korea since 1953 in particular-has guaranteed that
the sacrifices made by men like Private Pililaau, Sergeant Bleak, and thousands of other American fighting men during the
Korean War were not made in vain.
Further Readings
Alexander, Bevin. Korea: The First War We Lost. New York:
Hippocrene, 1986.
Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-53. New York:
Doubleday, 1987.
Brune, Lester H., ed. The Korean War: Handbook of the Literature and
Research. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Edwards, Paul M., comp. The Korean War: An Annotated Bibliography.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Fehrenbach, T. R. This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness. New
York: Macmillan, 1963.
Gugeler, Russell A. Combat Actions in Korea. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Army Center of Military History, 1970.
Hastings, Max. The Korean War. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1987.
Hermes, Walter G. Truce Tent and Fighting Front. United States Army in
the Korean War. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History,
1988.
Hinshaw, Arned. Heartbreak Ridge: Korea, 1951. New York: Praeger,
1989.
Marshall, S. L. A. Pork Chop Hill. New York: Permabooks, 1959.
Rees, David. Korea: The Limited War. New York: St. Martin's Press,
1964.
Stueck, William. The Korean War: An International History.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Westover, John G. Combat Support in Korea. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Army Center of Military History, 1987.
Cover: A 155-mm. howitzer firing at night (National
Archives)
Causes of the Korean Tragedy ... Failure of Leadership, Intelligence and Preparation
The Foundations of Freedom are the Courage of Ordinary People and Quality of our Arms
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