War and Peace Talks

In the spring of 1951, the Communist Chinese Forces (CCF) and the United Nations (UN) forces had "dug in" to defensive positions just north of the 38th parallel, the dividing line between North and South Korea. Like the trench warfare of World War I (1914–18), both sides were fairly secure in their positions. The war stopped moving. The most the combatants could really hope for in battle was to kill a lot of enemy soldiers, and that is what both sides did. Small gains were made by the UN in moving their line of defense north, but at a very high cost of lives.

By that time, international opinion had swung to the side of peace, even if it meant giving up the idea of a unified Korea. Without U.S. General Douglas MacArthur in command (he had been asked to step down as commander of the UN forces in April), the only strong voice in favor of a war to the finish was South Korean (ROK) President Syngman Rhee (1875–1965). General Matthew B. Ridgway (1895–1993), MacArthur's successor, was not ready to concede very much to the communists, but he did not heed Rhee's push for all-out war either. In the limited warfare he was waging, his job depended on some kind of negotiations. The U.S. State Department began to search for contacts on the communist side to begin negotiations for an armistice (a truce or suspension of hostilities).

Finding the right party with whom to enter into peace discussions proved to be difficult. Officially, the enemy was North Korea, but the U.S. negotiators believed the threat—and the power to negotiate—came from elsewhere. Approaching Communist China was problematic on several fronts. The United Nations did not recognize Communist China as a nation, so it was difficult to communicate as one government to another. (Ever since 1949, when the Communists defeated the U.S.-backed Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, the United States and the UN did not recognize Communist China.) Furthermore, the American diplomats who had understood China had long ago lost their jobs and returned to the United States, having been accused themselves of being communists or communist sympathizers (see Chapter 8). On top of this, the United States was still deluded in its belief that the Soviet Union was in charge of all communist nations. (The Soviet Union was the first communist country and was made up of fifteen republics, including Russia. It existed as a unified country from 1922 to 1991. Communism is a set of political beliefs that advocates the elimination of private property. It is a system in which goods are owned by the community as a whole rather than by specific individuals and are available to all as needed.)

The Soviet Union urges peace

Eventually a former U.S. diplomat contacted Soviet UN ambassador Jacob A. Malik (1906–1980). These two discussed the possibility of a cease-fire in Korea. On June 23, shortly after their second meeting, Malik surprised the State Department by broadcasting a message on UN radio. He stated that the "Soviet people" believed that a cease-fire and an armistice could be arranged between the hostile nations. The Soviet Union insisted that it did not know China's intentions regarding a cease-fire and that the discussions would have to be between the United States and China. In a different conversation, Soviet deputy foreign minister Andrei A. Gromyko (1909–1989) suggested that terms could be reached if the parties focused on ending the battles and getting their armies out of Korea and left the future Korean government for later discussions.

On June 30, 1951, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drafted a message for General Ridgway to broadcast by radio to the

enemy. (Created in 1949, 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.) Ridgway told the communist leaders that if they were interested in holding a meeting to discuss a cease-fire, then he would send representatives at such a time as they determined. He suggested meeting in a Danish hospital ship in Wonsan Harbor. On July 2, Peking Radio (from Beijing [Peking], China) broadcast a response signed by North Korean Premier Kim Il Sung (1912–1994) and General Peng Dehaui (P'eng Teh-huai; 1898–1974), the commander of the Chinese troops in Korea, that said: "We are authorized to tell you that we agree to suspend military activities and to hold peace negotiations, and that our delegates will meet with yours. We suggest, in regard to the place for holding talks, that such talks be held at Kaesong, on the 38th parallel. If you agree with this, our delegates will be prepared to meet your delegates between July 10 and 15, 1951."

In this message, the communist forces publicly agreed to stop fighting immediately. This would leave the troops on each side holding the positions they were in at that time, which was what the Americans wanted. This could have been the end of combat in the Korean War, but Ridgway did not trust his opponents. Ridgway believed that the Chinese and North Koreans would use a cease-fire to build up their strength and attack the UN forces unexpectedly and forcefully. After receiving Joint Chiefs and State Department approval, Ridgway wrote back to the communist leaders agreeing to meet, but saying that military activities would continue during the talks. In fact, the Joint Chiefs urged that military efforts be stepped up during the talks. Two more years of vicious fighting and hundreds of thousands of deaths resulted.

The talks begin

The talks began at Kaesong, a town at the 38th parallel in the hands of the communists at that time, with a preparatory meeting on July 8, at which the agenda and practical matters for further meetings were discussed. Disagreement and disagreeableness marked this meeting, as it would future ones. On July 10, at a once elegant but recently bombed teahouse in Kaesong, the chosen delegates of the opposing forces met. On the UN side, Vice Admiral Charles Turner Joy (1895–1956), commander of the Far East Naval Forces, was the senior delegate. Three other Americans—the Eighth Army chief of staff, the vice commander of the Far East Air Forces, and the deputy chief of staff of the Naval Forces—and one South Korean, ROK General Paik Sun Yup (1920–), also attended. On the communist side, the chief delegate was Lieutenant General Nam Il, the chief of staff of the North Korean People's Army. Nam Il had lived much of his life in the Soviet Union and had fought with the Russians in World War II (1939–45), coming back to Korea after the war. Two other North Korean officials attended. The Chinese army delegates were Teng Hua, deputy commander of the Chinese army, and Chieh Fang, chief of staff and political commissar of the Chinese army.

No pleasant exchanges occurred at this or in any of the meetings. The mood was cold and formal to begin with and heated up only with insults and arguments. At first there were showdowns over little things, such as whose chair was taller, whose flag was exhibited more prominently on the table, or who faced south. As the meetings continued, more important practical matters arose. On the first day of talks, fully armed communist troops came through the area, pointing guns in a manner that felt threatening to the UN delegates. Another matter that arose in the early meetings was that communist journalists were at hand, but no other war correspondents. These issues were quickly resolved. A fivemile circle around Kaesong was proclaimed a neutral area. The armed North Korean troops were banished from the neutral zone where talks were held, and foreign journalists were permitted in.

These concessions did not help the discussions. The negotiators spent the next ten sessions arguing about the items to be included on an agenda for the talks, in effect, arguing about what they were going to argue about. On July 26, the negotiators compromised on the agenda. The five points listed for discussions were:

1. adoption of the agenda;
2. the location of the military demarcation line and the demilitarized zone;
3. arrangements for a cease-fire and armistice, including a supervisory organization to oversee it;
4. arrangements for exchanging prisoners of war;
5. recommendations for governments on either side.

This agenda omitted the areas of contention. It did not mention the UN demand that the International Red Cross, an international relief organization, be allowed to inspect prison camps, or the Chinese demands that all foreign troops withdraw from Korea and that the demarcation line be set at the 38th parallel. Although these points were left out of the agenda, they were still very much at issue. In the first meeting after the agenda was adopted, the delegates were immediately at an impasse. The communists wanted the demarcation line at the 38th parallel. The United States wanted it at the existing battlefront, slightly north of the 38th parallel. No one would budge. In his book In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950–1953, John Toland provided a sample of how this argument—with no one giving any ground at all—played out in the negotiations:

General Nam Il: It has been proved that your proposal is untenable and that our proposal is based on reason. Therefore, whatever novel and ridiculous arguments you fabricate, they would never bolster your proposal. I can tell you frankly that as long as you do not abandon your unreasonable proposal, it will not be possible for our conference to make any progress. As for our proposal, its reasons are irrefutable: therefore, it is unshakable. We insist on our proposal of making the 38th parallel the military demarcation line.

Vice Admiral Joy: Yesterday you used the word "arrogant" in connection with a proposal the United Nations Command delegation now has before this conference. The United Nations Command delegation has been in search of an expression which conveys the haughty stubbornness of your attitude. "Arrogance" is indeed the word for it. By your obdurate and unreasonable refusal to negotiate you have brought these meetings to a standstill. You have slammed every door leading to possible progress.

Stymied

Toward the end of August 1951, the communists called off the talks because, they claimed, UN aircraft had bombed the neutral zone at Kaesong. The United States denied any bombing and claimed that the communists were trying to discredit the United Nations. On September 10, another bombing occurred in Kaesong. The United States again denied responsibility but soon learned that one of their bombers had, in fact, accidentally bombed Kaesong. General Ridgway apologized to the communist delegates, who rejected his apology. Ridgway was growing increasingly hostile to the communist negotiators. He found them rude and insulting to his delegates, and he felt it to be beneath American dignity to give any ground to them. He threatened to stop the meetings entirely if the communists would not agree to hold them at a different location than Kaesong. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Harry S. Truman all urged him not to offer ultimatums to the Chinese. Worldwide opinion would not support the United States if it walked out of the peace talks. In the end, the Chinese compromised without being forced. In October, the meetings resumed at Punmanjom, a small village six miles east of Kaesong.

Back at the front

Although the terms were very different after the truce talks began, combat raged on as violently as ever. In the summer of 1951, a new form of battle became established. It was no longer a war of large movements of advance and retreat. Slight gains were made by either side in getting control of a ridge or a hill, which was then often lost again. Gaining a hill in this warfare could cost more lives than gaining a city had in the first stages of the war. The most famous of the battles— Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge—came early in the truce period and set the model for the many battles to come.

Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge

The Battle of Bloody Ridge started with a U.S. plan to straighten out the defensive line. This involved taking the northern ridge of the Punchbowl, a large crater surrounded by hills that lay in the midst of the battlefront that was the scene of many battles during the last two years of the Korean War. The

attack began in the summer with a daylong barrage of artillery fire, completely wiping out all plant life in the area. However, artillery fire was not enough to destroy the underground bunkers (protected underground rooms) protecting the communist troops. The bunkers were strongly fortified with heavy timber and rock and were nearly impossible to penetrate with standard army weapons. When the South Korean (ROK) Army units approached the scorched land, the enemy fired on them

from their bunkers with machine guns and grenades, sending the ROK troops back time after time. After several attempts, some of the ROK forces broke and ran. In early September, the Eighth Army sent in the marines and the Second Division as well as two more ROK divisions. Three weeks of brutal fighting ensued, and the North Koreans finally withdrew from Bloody Ridge. There had been twenty-seven hundred Eighth Army casualties and fifteen thousand communist casualties.

From September 13 to September 26, a similar battle was fought at Heartbreak Ridge, another ridge in the Punchbowl. With many casualties, the assault had to be called off: the North Koreans were too firmly entrenched to be forced to move. Then in early October, the Eighth Army attacked at Mundung-ni, a spot near Heartbreak Ridge, sparking another drawn-out assault. Heartbreak Ridge was gained after thirty days of battle, but the Second Division alone had suffered 3,700 casualties. The communist casualties were estimated at 25,000. The benefits of these offensives were minimal, and attacks like them were occurring throughout the front. From July to November 1951, the casualty rate soared: some estimate that there were up to 60,000 UN casualties and 234,000 communist casualties.

Syngman Rhee

As the Americans, North Koreans, and Chinese delegates fiercely argued about the fate of Korea, Syngman Rhee made it known that he would accept nothing less than what the United Nations had resolved: the unification of Korea and the withdrawal of foreign troops. According to Joseph Goulden in Korea: The Untold Story of the War, Rhee made his own agenda for a truce, which he sent to the U.S. State Department:

1. complete withdrawal of Chinese forces from Korea;
2. disarmament of North Korea;
3. UN commitment to prevent any third-party support of the North Koreans;
4. South Korean participation in any UN consideration in "any aspect of the Korean problem";
5. preservation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Korea.

In a July 16 letter to General Ridgway, signed by Rhee and six other Republic of Korea government officials, he expressed his determination: "The substance of the position of my government is that we cannot maintain our nation in half our country. A divided Korea is a ruined Korea, unstable economically, politically, and militarily…. In every Korean heartand in every Korean mind the fact is clear that our nation

would be plunged into irrevocable disaster by any acceptance of a continued dividing line."

South Korean general Paik attended the early truce meetings knowing Rhee's opposition to the truce. He also realized that the UN delegates did not accept Rhee's position and were not taking it into account in their dealings with the communists. Paik was frustrated and did not speak at the meetings. The anticommunist South Koreans were losing patience with the UN and greatly feared the compromises they might make. But their only option was to fight the North Korean and Chinese armies alone, and they did not have the strength.

Van Fleet restructures the ROKs

Throughout the war the American military and the American press had been scornful of the ROK Army. Although the South Koreans had lost many times the number of soldiers that the UN forces had lost, they had frequently broken ranks

and scattered when the enemy was fierce. The Chinese knew to hit the defense lines of the Eighth Army at the ROK posi tions, where there was often weakness. The ROKs never had sufficient equipment or arms and ammunition, and they had little training when the war began. The leadership was also inconsistent. Despite all this, they had proven repeatedly to be dedicated fighters.

After the truce talks began, General James A. Van Fleet (1892–1992), commander of the Eighth Army, decided to take all the ROK divisions out of the line and retrain them. His training program was intensive, and after training the South Koreans were finally provided with a more reasonable supply of arms and ammunition. When they went back to the line, the South Korean army was strong and skilled and had no more "bug-outs," or disorganized retreats. By December 1952, three out of four Eighth Army soldiers at the battlefront were ROKs.

The demarcation line

When the truce talks continued, the next item for consideration was the demarcation line and demilitarized zone (DMZ) that would separate the north from the south. The communists quit insisting that the line be at the 38th parallel, but at that point General Ridgway began to insist that the town of Kaesong—once a capital city of Korea—should be in the hands of the southerners. The communists would agree to a line at the existing front, but not to giving up Kaesong. Ridgway initially insisted on Kaesong but was overruled by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On November 23, 1951, a new demarcation line was established at the front, with a DMZ that stretched out two kilometers on each side of the line.

Proceeding on to the third agenda item, the negotiators spent several weeks disputing the arrangements for a cease-fire and a supervisory organization to oversee it. Ridgway was particularly interested in having free inspections on both sides of the demarcation line, and the Chinese wanted to be able to rebuild the roads, airports, and buildings in North Korea without hindrance. After a good deal of compromising on both sides, all the terms were arranged but one, whether and when airfields could be rebuilt. It was agreed to go on to the next agenda item and come back to this issue.

The next item on the agenda was the exchange of prisoners of war (POWs). Truce talks had already been going on for five months. No one imagined that the fourth item on the agenda would take more than a year to negotiate.

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.

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

Tomedi, Rudy. No Bugles, No Drums: An Oral History of the Korean War. New York: Wiley, 1993.

Varhola, Michael J. Fire and Ice: The Korean War, 1950–1953. Mason City, IA: Savas Publishing, 2000.

Words to Know

agenda: a list or outline of things to be discussed, planned, or undertaken.

armistice: talks between opposing forces in which they agree to a truce or suspension of hostilities.

artillery: large weapons, such as howitzers, rockets, and 155-millimeter guns, that shoot missiles, and generally take a crew to operate.

bug-out: to panic and run away from a battle in confusion; a disorderly retreat without permission.

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

China Lobby: a group of Americans during the late 1940s and early 1950s who fervently supported Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in his struggles against the Communist Chinese, and who held a romanticized and sometime patronizing view of the Chinese people and their relations with Americans.

concessions: things that are given up and granted to the other side in an argument or conflict.

demilitarized zone (DMZ): an area in which military presence and activity are forbidden.

disarmament: taking away a group's weapons and other military equipment in order to render it unable or less able to make war.

impasse: the position of being faced with a problem for which there seems no solution; a stalemate.

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

ROK: an acronym standing for Republic of Korea; "ROK" was frequently used to refer specifically to South Korean soldiers.

trench warfare: combat in which enemies dig into ditches facing each other across the battlefield; the ditches then serve as defensive positions. Trench warfare is usually associated with World War I (1914–18).

ultimatum: a demand made of an opponent, in which he or she must accept a condition or request or face consequences.

war correspondent: someone who provides news stories to a newspaper or television or radio news program from the battlefront or on location in a war.