Negotiations at the 38th Parallel

On December 23, 1950, Eighth Army commander Lieutenant General Walton H. "Johnnie" Walker (1889–1950) was speeding down a Korean road north of the South Korean capital city of Seoul when his jeep collided with a truck. He died almost immediately. Walker had commanded the Eighth Army through the worst of times with a steady hand. He was not liked by all, least of all by his superior, commander of the United Nations (UN) Forces General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964). But many close observers believed that Walton's leadership had made the saving difference in the breakout at the Pusan Perimeter (see Chapter 6), and that his quick perception of the Chinese strength and his order for rapid withdrawal from North Korea in November had avoided the massacre of his troops.

Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway (1895–1993) was appointed to replace Walker as the commander of the Eighth Army. A hero in World War II (1939–45), Ridgway was serving as deputy to the army chief of staff at the time of Walker's death. Ridgway lost no time in getting to the front to assess the condition of the troops, arriving on December 26. He was disturbed by what he found, as he recorded in his memoirs, The Korean War: "After meeting all ranks of officers and men, it was my impression that they were deficient in vigor, bravery, and fighting spirit." Ridgway placed a grenade in the flap of his vest as a sign that he meant to fight. The grenade can be seen in almost every photograph of the general during the war.

The Communist Chinese Forces (CCF), siding with the communist North Koreans, launched their third offensive on New Year's Day, 1951, shortly after Ridgway arrived. In an allout effort, the Chinese successfully defeated the Eighth Army, pushing it south some fifty miles below the 38th parallel, the dividing line between North and South Korea. On January 4, South Korean president Syngman Rhee (1875–1965) and his government were evacuated from Seoul for the second time with the Eighth Army behind them. The capital city was once again in the communists' hands. Behind the retreating Eighth Army was a stream of Korean refugees.

This was the third of four times that Seoul changed hands. First the incoming communists persecuted those suspected of participating in or helping the Rhee regime, and then, during the recapture, the South Koreans arrested and often killed suspected communists. Anyone involved in either side's politics or military by this time had either fled or been arrested and often executed. The capital city was burnt and bombed. It was a terrifying time to be living in Korea, and the lines of fleeing refugees on the icy Korean roads grew longer and longer.

By Ridgway's orders, the Eighth Army's retreat went farther south than may have been necessary in order to give the troops a chance to recover. In mid-January, the Eighth Army formed a defense line across the 37th parallel. In the meantime, most of the X Corps (the First Marine Division, the Third and Seventh Infantry divisions, and ROK I Corps, under the command of Major General Edward M. Almond [1892–1979]), was in the southern part of the peninsula, waging attacks on guerrillas. (Guerrillas are soldiers who fight an irregular form of combat; in small groups, the warriors use ambushes and surprise attacks to harass or even destroy much larger armies.) General Ridgway was ready for a counteroffensive.

Worldwide fears

During the UN forces' long retreat from North Korea, panic set in around the world. The chances for a third world war—complete with U.S. and Soviet atomic bombs—seemed high. General MacArthur was making the leaders of many nations nervous. He wanted authority to bomb the Chinese bases in Manchuria, an area in northern China just north of

the Korean border. He wanted to use troops offered by Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) in Korea. MacArthur was unwilling to go along with any aspect of fighting a limited war, one in which the military held a defense line in Korea while the politicians negotiated the terms of ending the war. And he was making his views known.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department became increasingly concerned about MacArthur's contradictory statements and his failure to communicate his intentions to them. (The Joint Chiefs of Staff is an agency within the Department of Defense serving to advise the president and the secretary of defense on matters of war.) Some blamed MacArthur for failing to alert the UN forces to the presence of the Chinese armies. Many felt that he had been wrong in separating the command of the Eighth Army and the X Corps and rushing into an unknown situation (see Chapter 7). In UN countries, fear of MacArthur's warmongering was rising. On December 6, 1950, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) had issued a directive requiring all public officials to clear in advance with the State Department and Department of Defense any statements they made concerning foreign or military policy. This was intended for MacArthur.

On November 30, 1950, the president himself had created more worldwide panic. When asked by a reporter whether the atomic bomb was being considered as a weapon for the Korean War, Truman, as quoted in Joseph C. Goulden's Korea: The Untold Story of Korea, answered that "there has always been active consideration of its use." He went on to imply that it would be up to MacArthur to decide if a situation necessitated the use of the atom bomb. This was not true; only the president had the power to make such a decision. Since Truman was very clear about what he said to the reporter, many historians believe he made the incorrect statement deliberately to frighten the Chinese out of the war. The Chinese did not take the bait, but many UN allies became very disturbed.

British Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1883–1967) responded to the other nations' concerns by quickly heading for Washington, D.C., to meet with Truman. Soon after their four-day conference, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893–1971) introduced to the Joint Chiefs of Staff the idea of a cease-fire in Korea with the UN forces holding the 38th parallel, so that Korea would be as it was before the war. No one liked giving up the prospect of unification, but most agreed that a cease-fire made sense. The proposal was made to China through the United Nations. China rejected the proposal. On December 23, Communist Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai; 1898–1976) announced that China would not negotiate a cease-fire unless: (1) all foreign troops were withdrawn from Korea, (2) U.S. troops were withdrawn from Taiwan (formerly Formosa), and (3) Communist China received representation in the United Nations.

Ridgway takes over

By the time General Ridgway arrived to take General Walker's place, the X Corps had finally come under the command of the Eighth Army. MacArthur had given Ridgway the authority to make his own decisions about attacking, without referring back to headquarters. Ridgway surveyed a truly international army, with troops from sixteen nations amounting to nearly 365,000 men. After witnessing the Jan uary 1 Chinese offensive and the retreat of his command to the 37th parallel, Ridgway quickly instilled a sense of purpose and professionalism to his huge army and then planned a strategy for attack.

By this time, the Chinese practice of attacking full force and then withdrawing to resupply, replace casualties, and rest was well known. While the system had worked well in the northern parts of the Korean peninsula where the Chinese

were not far from their supply bases, it was a rough system for soldiers so far from home. The Chinese soldiers were generally given food for four days of attack. After that they were on their own. Many of the Chinese captured in battle were starving and exhausted.

After the January 1 offensive was over, there was little sign of the Chinese. Dissatisfied with the intelligence he was receiving, Ridgway began sending out patrols to find out where the enemy troops were. From January 15 to February 11, 1951, the patrols, working slowly and with a united front, made their way north, encountering only light enemy resistance. Although Seoul was heavily defended, the UN forces moved up to a new defensive line that closed in around the capital city.

On February 11, the Chinese launched a massive counterattack. The main thrust of the offensive took place at Chipyong-ni on February 14 and 15. The UN forces were hit very hard and they requested permission to withdraw fifteen miles to avoid being surrounded. But General Ridgway would not allow retreat. Somehow, the UN forces held and soundly defeated the Chinese. When the Chinese withdrew from the battle at Chipyong-ni, they left behind more than five thousand of their dead.

Ridgway began to regularly gather his own intelligence on the location of the communist armies. Knowing that the Chinese troops were in desperate straits from exhaustion, cold, and hunger, he made it his business to find out when they were going to withdraw to resupply. His new method of attacking was to put units right on the trail of the withdrawing enemy so that they could not rest or get new supplies. The advances were slow and at times strong resistance from the communist armies pushed back the UN forces, but continuous progress was made.

On March 14 and 15, the communist forces withdrew from Seoul in order to avoid being surrounded by UN forces. Seoul, although nearly a ghost town by this time, was back in UN control after changing hands four times, and the Eighth Army was again approaching the 38th parallel. In April, they had advanced farther, to a line north of the 38th parallel called the Kansas line.

MacArthur goes too far

On March 20, the Truman administration put together a plan for a cease-fire. Since the Eight Army was approaching the 38th parallel, Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff felt they could come to terms with the communists from a position of strength and try to put an end to the killing. Their proposal left the key issues open for future discussion; instead of rejecting the idea of withdrawing U.S. troops from Korea, for example, they proposed that discussions on the issue begin with the cease-fire. While they were drafting the plan, the Joint Chiefs sent a letter to MacArthur telling him to postpone any advances through the 38th parallel until after the president presented his cease-fire proposal.

The State Department went to work on a draft of a proposal to China, but before they got a chance to broadcast it to China, MacArthur issued a statement of his own to the enemy. MacArthur's March 24 statement, quoted here from Bevin Alexander's Korea: The First War We Lost, read like an ultimatum (an "or else" kind of threat):

The enemy therefore must now be painfully aware that a decision of the United Nations to depart from its tolerant effort to contain the war to the area of Korea through expansion of our military operations to his coastal areas and interior bases would doom Red China to the risk of imminent military collapse… Within my area of authority as military commander, however, it should be needless to say I stand ready at any time to confer in the field with the commander in chief of the enemy forces in an earnest effort to find any military means whereby the realization of the political objectives of the United Nations in Korea, to which no nation may justly take exception, might be accomplished without further bloodshed.

In other words, MacArthur was telling the Chinese that they had their choice between all-out war in their own land or to accept the peace that the United Nations dictated. This directly contradicted the intentions of Truman's peace initiative. The proposal for peace had to be temporarily dropped, since it reflected such a wide split within the U.S. government.

Truman, a Democrat, was constantly attacked by Republicans in the U.S. Congress who criticized his Korean War policies, whether from the standpoint of isolationism (the view that the United States should take care of its problems at home and not fight in other countries) or the hawkish (warready)

attitude of MacArthur. The Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives had picked up on MacArthur's disagreements with the Truman administration and wrote to MacArthur asking why Chinese Nationalist troops were not being used in the war. MacArthur responded, and on April 5 the representatives read to the House MacArthur's letter, which both insulted the Truman administration's policy and supported a policy that the administration was against. This was, of course, very politically damaging to the president.

The sacking of a hero

Truman realized that he could not have a commander in Korea on whom he could not rely. There was general agreement among his top advisers and the Joint Chiefs that MacArthur must be relieved of his command, and the decision was made. MacArthur was informed on April 11, 1951. General Matthew B. Ridgway would take MacArthur's place as commander of the UN forces and General James A. Van Fleet (1892–1992), a corps commander during World War II, would succeed Ridgway as commander of the Eighth Army. MacArthur came back to the United States less than a week later. Although he was relieved of his command, he was met with a tremendous hero's welcome, with huge crowds turning out for his every public appearance. President Truman was attacked harshly throughout the country.

MacArthur would later present his side of things in hearings arranged by Congress to investigate the way the Truman administration had handled the Korean War. In the end, even many of MacArthur's supporters understood that a commander of armies who sidesteps the democratic process in order to carry out his own agenda is a true danger to his country. In the words of Korean War historian Bevin Alexander in his book Korea: The First War We Lost: "Whether MacArthur had been right or wrong made little difference; by taking it upon himself to make policy unilaterally, he was operating outside the American political system."

The Iron Triangle

The communist armies had been preparing for a spring offensive for months, gathering troops at a place north of the 38th parallel known as the Iron Triangle, the area set within a triangle defined by the North Korean cities of Chorwon, Kumwha, and Pyongyang. On April 21, the UN forces, now at about half a million strong, struck near Chorwon and Kumwha. The next day, the Chinese and North Korean armies counterattacked in force. They struck particularly hard on the British Twenty-ninth Brigade, which battled the enemy for two difficult and bloody days and nights. The Chinese, it is estimated, lost about ten thousand men in that battle, while the Twenty-ninth Brigade had about one thousand casualties. The Chinese continued to send more troops into battle and in mid-May the communist forces formed another offensive. Although they inflicted many casualties and scattered two South Korean divisions, when the attack was over a day later, the communists had suffered worse casualties than they had inflicted.

Defeating the enemy

Although the Chinese were suffering badly from exhaustion, severe casualties, and a lack of ammunition and supplies, they continued to strike at the UN line during the

month of May. Without food and ammunition they could never sustain an attack. By the end of the month, the Chinese were at such a severe disadvantage that they began to surrender in large numbers. An offensive at the Iron Triangle and points north was launched by the UN forces at this time, with the U.S. Marines attacking a volcanic crater called the Punchbowl. When it was over, the UN held the lower lip of the Punchbowl and had moved north on the east coast above Kansong. The Chinese casualties were terrible, in the range of twenty-seven thousand. In his book In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950–1953, John Toland quoted a platoon sergeant, who wrote his reaction to the slaughter in a letter to his wife:

We crossed the parallel again yesterday and we have the Chinks on a wild retreat.… There's a hell of an air strike goingon about 3 miles up the road… the Air Force and Artillery are giving us fits with their noise. And this place we are in now is a horrifying sight. We caught a bunch of Chinese in the open here (we are in a long valley along a river bed) and it certainly is a mess. Over a hundred vehicles, plenty of cannons, uncounted dead horses and of course, Chinese. We caught them about day before yesterday and it really was a slaughter. The days are warm now and the sun is getting to them and the stink is terrible. No exaggeration this—we can't turn around without sighting dead men or horses.… We use bulldozers for the horses and mules, but naturally we have to pick the Chinese men up and place them in graves. A lot of people figure the more you bury the less you have to fight (I do too) but boy! When it comes to planting them I wish the Air Force and Artillery and our marksmanship weren't so thorough and precise. Boy! I wish I could see a little peace for a while. I'm sick of the stench of the dead and dying and seeing torn bodies scattered like waste paper on a windy day.

In early June, the Chinese were no longer capable of attack, but they were prepared to defend their position, whatever it took. During the spring, they had built bunkers—reinforced underground rooms—that were nearly impossible to penetrate. The Chinese had set up a defense line that they could hold, across the Punchbowl from the UN forces. In this stalemate, the time had come to negotiate a peace for Korea.

Where to Learn More

Alexander, Bevin. Korea: The First War We Lost. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986, revised edition, 2000.

Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953. New York, Times Books, 1987.

Goulden, Joseph C. Korea: The Untold Story of the War. New York: Times Books, 1982.

Ridgway, Matthew B. The Korean War. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967.

Shinn, Bill. The Forgotten War Remembered: Korea, 1950–1953; A War Correspondent's Notebook and Today's Danger in Korea. Elizabeth, NJ: Hollym International, 1996.

Toland, John. In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950–1953. New York: William Morrow, 1991.

Words to Know

atomic bomb: a powerful bomb created by splitting the nuclei of a heavy chemical, such as plutonium or uranium, in a rapid chain reaction, resulting in a violent and destructive shock wave as well as radiation.

bunker: a reinforced underground room dug into a battle area for protection against enemy gunfire and bombs.

grenade: a small explosive weapon that can be thrown, usually with a pin that is pulled to activate it and a spring-loaded safety lever that is held down until the user wants to throw the grenade; once the safety lever is released, the grenade will explode in seconds.

hawkish: advocating for all-out war or military action.

intelligence (military): information about the enemy.

isolationism: the view that a country should take care of its problems at home and not interfere in conflicts in other countries.

Joint Chiefs of Staff: an agency within the Department of Defense serving to advise the president and the secretary of defense on matters of war. The Joint Chiefs of Staff consists of a chairman, a vice chairman, the chief of staff of the army, the chief of naval operations, the chief of staff of the air force, and the commandant of the marine corps.

limited warfare: warfare with an objective other than the enemy's complete destruction, as in holding a defensive line during negotiations.

stalemate: deadlock; the state in which the efforts of each party in a conflict cancels out the efforts of the other party so that no one makes any headway.

38th parallel: the 38th degree of north latitude as it bisects the Korean Peninsula, chosen by Americans as the dividing line between what was to be Soviet-occupied North Korea and U.S.-occupied South Korea in 1945.

unilaterally: one-sided; acting only on one's own part, without reference to others.

warmongering: pushing for war.

The Twenty-fourth RCT, an African American Unit

While the Twenty-fourth Division was fighting at Taejon, the First Cavalry Division and the Twenty-fifth Division arrived in Korea. Among the incoming troops was the Twenty-fourth Regimental Combat Team (RCT), an all-black unit of the Twenty-fifth Division. Up to that time, the American military had been segregated, with African Americans separated from whites. Although President Harry S. Truman had signed Executive Order 9981 in 1948, which provided for "equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the Armed Forces," only the air force had actually integrated its troops, having African Americans and other groups living and working in the same facilities. The army, showing considerable racism, had dragged its feet on the issue. The Twenty-fourth RCT was the only allblack regiment in the army.

On July 21, the Twenty-fourth RCT led a very successful attack on the town of Yechon, defeating a large unit of North Koreans. But soon afterwards, the army began to discredit the feat, saying it had not really happened. The victory was the last one for the Twenty-fourth. According to army history, in several battles in the next few weeks the Twenty-fourth RCT panicked and ran away (bugged-out). Many army officers made much out of this, saying they could not rely on the team. But members of the Twenty-fourth RCT disputed the way they were represented. According to them, they were forced to retreat as all other units had been; that they "bugged-out" seemed to be no different than what other troops in Korea were doing daily. The dispute about the Twenty-fourth RCT was great enough that the army began to integrate. The Twenty-fourth RCT was dissolved and its men were absorbed into other units and there were no more segregated units.