The Static War

  On June 23 1951 Jacob Malik, the USSR delegate to the United Nations, announced in New York during a broadcast of the U.N. radio program, "The Price of Peace," that the USSR believed the war in Korea could be settled. "Discussions," he said, "should be started between the belligerents for a cease fire and an armistice...." When Communist China endorsed Malik's proposal over Peiping radio, President Truman authorized General Ridgway to arrange armistice talks with his enemy counterpart. Through an exchange of radio messages both sides agreed to open negotiations on July 10 at the town of Kaesong, in territory which was then no-man's-land in the west but which would become a neutral area. At the first armistice conference the two delegations agreed that hostilities would continue until an armistice agreement was signed. Except for brief, violent episodes, however, action along the front would never regain the momentum of the first year. By July 26 the two armistice delegations fixed the points to be settled in order to achieve an armistice. But then the enemy delegates began to delay negotiations, to gain time, it seemed, in which to strengthen their military forces, and thus also to strengthen their bargaining position. In any case, the enemy delegation continued to delay and finally broke off negotiations on August 22. General Van Fleet, at that juncture, opened limited-objective attacks. In east-central Korea, he sent forces toward terrain objectives five to seven miles above Line Kansas-among them places named the Punchbowl, Bloody Ridge, and Heartbreak Ridge-to drive enemy forces from positions that favored an attack on Line Kansas. These objectives were won by the last week of October. In the west, Van Fleet's forces struck northwest on a forty-mile front to secure a new line three to four miles beyond the Wyoming line in order to protect important supply roads that lay only a short distance behind the existing western front. The new line was reached by October 12. These successes may have had an influence on the enemy, who agreed to return to the armistice conference table. Negotiations resumed on October 25, this time at Panmunjom, a tiny settlement seven miles southeast of Kaesong. Hope for an early armistice grew on November 27 when the two delegations agreed that a line of demarcation during an armistice would be the existing line of contact provided an armistice agreement was reached within thirty days. Hence, while both sides awaited the outcome of negotiations, fighting during the remainder of 1951 tapered off to patrol clashes, raids, and small battles for possession of outposts in no-man's-land. The first tactical use of helicopters by U.S. forces occurred about this time when almost a thousand marines were lifted to a front-line position and a like number returned to the rear. Discord over several issues, including the exchange of prisoners of war, prevented an armistice agreement within the stipulated thirty days.
  The prisoner of war quarrel heightened in January 1952 after UNC delegates proposed to give captives a choice in repatriation proceedings, maintaining that those prisoners who did not wish to return to their homelands could be simply "set at liberty" according to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The enemy representatives protested vigorously. While argument continued, both sides tacitly extended the November 27 provisions for a line of demarcation. This had the effect of holding battle action to the pattern of the thirty-day waiting period. By May 1952 the two delegations were completely deadlocked on the repatriation issue. On the 7th of that month inmates of UNC Prison Camp No. 1 on Koje-do, an island of the southern coast, on orders smuggled to them from North Korea managed to entice the U.S. camp commander to a compound gate, drag him inside, and keep him captive. The strategy, which became clear in subsequent prisoner demands, was to trade the U.S. officer's life and release for UNC admissions of inhumane treatment of captives, including alleged cruelties during previous screenings of prisoners in which a large number of prisoners refused repatriation. The obvious objective was to discredit the voluntary repatriation stand taken by the UNC delegation at Panmunjom. Although a new camp commander obtained his predecessor's release, in the process he signed a damaging statement including an admission that "...there have been instances of bloodshed where many prisoners of war have been killed and wounded by U.N. Forces." There was no change in the UNC stand on repatriation but the statement was widely exploited by the Communists at Panmunjom and elsewhere for its propaganda value.
  Amid the Koje-do trouble, General Ridgway received transfer orders placing him in command of NATO forces in Europe. General Mark W. Clark became the new commander in the Far East, with one less responsibility than MacArthur and Ridgway had carried. On April 28 a peace treaty with Japan had gone into effect, restoring Japan's sovereignty and thus ending the occupation. Faced immediately with the Koje-do affair, General Clark had the impression of walking "... into something that felt remarkably like a swinging door...." He immediately repudiated the prison camp commander's statement. Moving swiftly, he placed Brig. Gen. Haydon L. Boatner in charge of the camp with instructions to move the prisoners into smaller, more manageable compounds and to institute other measures that would eliminate the likelihood of another uprising. General Boatner completed the task on June 10. While argument over repatriation went on at Panmunjom, action at the front continued as a series of artillery duels, patrols, ambushes, raids, and bitter contests for outpost positions. But for all the furious and costly small-scale battles that took place, the lines remained substantially unchanged at the end of 1952. The armistice conference meanwhile went into an indefinite recess in October with the repatriation issue still unresolved.
  In November, the American people elected a Republican President. Dwight D. Eisenhower. An issue in the campaign had been the war in Korea, over which there was a growing popular discontent, in particular with the lack of progress toward an armistice. In a campaign pledge to "go to Korea,  Eisenhower implied that if elected he would attempt to end the war quickly. Consequently, when the President-elect in early December fulfilled his promise to visit Korea, there was indeed some expectation of a dramatic change in the conduct of the war. General Clark went so far as to prepare detailed estimates of measures necessary to obtain a military victory. But it quickly became clear that Eisenhower, like President Truman, preferred to seek an honorable armistice. As he would write later, however, the President-elect did decide to let Communist authorities know that if satisfactory progress toward an armistice was not forthcoming, "...we intended to move decisively without inhibition in our use of weapons, and would no longer be responsible for confining hostilities to the Korean peninsula." Immediately after taking office, President Eisenhower made sure this word reached Moscow, Peiping, and P'yongyang.
  In the hope of prompting a resumption of armistice negotiations, General Clark in February 1953 proposed to his enemy counterpart that the two sides exchange sick and wounded prisoners. But there was no response and no break in the deadlock at Panmunjom by spring. At the front, where in February Lt. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor had replaced General Van Fleet as the Eighth Army commander, the battle action continued in the mold of the previous year. The break finally came near the end of March, about three weeks after the death of Josef Stalin, when enemy armistice delegates not only replied favorably to General Clark's proposal that sick and wounded captives be exchanged but also suggested that this exchange perhaps could "... lead to the smooth settlement of the entire question of prisoners of war." With that, the armistice conference resumed in April. An exchange of sick and wounded prisoners was carried out that same month; and before the middle of June, the prisoner repatriation problem was settled through agreement that each side would have an opportunity to persuade those captives refusing return to their homelands to change their minds.
  The pace of battle quickened in May when Chinese forces launched regimental attacks against outposts guarding approaches to the Eighth Army's main line in the west. A large battle flared on June 10 when three Chinese divisions penetrated two miles through a South Korean position in central Korea before being contained. That engagement could have been the last of the war since the terms of an armistice by then were all but complete. But on June 18 ROK President Rhee, who from the beginning had objected to any armistice that left Korea divided, ordered the release of North Korean prisoners who had refused repatriation. Within a few days most of these North Korean captives "brokeout" of prison camp and disappeared among a cooperative South Korean populace. Since the captives had been guarded by South Korean troops, UNC officials disclaimed responsibility for the break, but the enemy armistice delegates denounced the action as a serious breach of faith. It took more than a month to repair the damage done by Rhee's order. Enemy forces used this delay to wrest more ground from UNC control, attacking on July 13 and driving a wedge eight miles deep in the Eighth Army's central sector. General Taylor deployed units to contain the shoulders and point of the wedge then counterattacked. But he halted his attack force on July 20 short of the original line since by that date the armistice delegations had come to a new accord and needed only to work out a few small details. Taylor's order to halt ended the last major battle of the war.
  After a week of dealing with administrative matters, each chief delegate signed the military armistice agreement at Panmunjom at 10:00 a.m. on July 27. General Clark and the enemy commanders later affixed their signatures at their respective headquarters. As stipulated in the agreement, all fighting stopped twelve hours after the first signing, at 10:00 p.m., July 27, 1953. When the final casualty report for the thirty-seven months of fighting was prepared, total UNC casualties reached over 550,000, including almost 95,000 dead. U.S. losses numbered 142,091, of whom 33,629 were killed, 103,284 wounded, and 5,178 missing or captured. U.S. Army casualties alone totaled 27,704 dead, 77,596 wounded, and 4,658 missing or captured. The hulk of these casualties occurred during the first year of the fighting. The estimate of enemy casualties, including prisoners, exceeded 1,500,000, of which 900,000, almost two-thirds, were Chinese.