Soviets want to move peace talks out of Korea
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Jan. 2, 2001) - Following a New Year's Day bombing by the communists of Kimpo Airfield and the Inchon harbor west of Seoul, peace negotiations continued on a bumpy course in Korea 50 years ago this week.
Jan. 3-9, 1952 -- At the subcommittee talks on exchanging prisoners, the reds say they will exchange military and civilian prisoners in phases, not all at once as the U.N. negotiators want. Civilians will also have the right to refuse to go home.
At the top-level talks on enforcing the armistice, the communists refuse to agree to a ban on building military airfields after the truce. An unidentified U.N. negotiator says Jan. 7 the red delegates are acting "like schoolgirls who had a secret and were not telling their friends." The same day Adm. C. Turner Joy, chief U.N. delegate, says that "with each passing day there is less and less reason to think the communists really want a stable armistice."
The reds also stop talking on Jan. 7 because they want to see what happens in the U.N. General Assembly with Soviet Foreign Mister Andrei Y. Vishinsky's proposal to move peace talks from Korea to the Security Council. Small countries were at first afraid of the consequences if they voted against the Soviet plan, but the United States, Great Britain and France convinced them that the plan was a trap, and that peace negotiations should be conducted by opposing militaries on the battlefield, not in the U.N. where it would be a political issue.
On Jan. 9 the Security Council defeated the measure 40-6, with the Soviet bloc voting for it. The Political Committee also voted 47-6 (Chile joined the Soviet bloc in the committee) to cease discussions on Korea.
Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, U.N. supreme commander, said in Tokyo Jan. 9 that the communist delegates "represent only a small clique of power-mad masters in the Kremlin ... and do not and never will represent the will of the people."
The battle for a hill named the "Sasi Bulge" that began Dec. 28 ends Jan. 9 with the reds still holding the hill.
Jan. 4 -- The Medal of Honor is presented posthumously to Cpl. Clair Goodblood, 21, of the 7th Infantry Regiment for staging a one-man fight against the enemy on a hill near Popsu-dong, Korea. He held the communists off long enough for his demoralized and confused comrades to regroup and counterattack. When they did, they found Goodblood lying beside his machine gun with more than 100 dead enemy within his field of fire. Goodblood was the 39th American to earn the Medal of Honor during the Korean War.
South Korean Ambassador to the U.S. Dr. Yu Chan Yang reports after a meeting with President Truman that the president told him the U.S. "won't let Korea down" in the truce talks, but now is not the time for the two countries to join in a mutual defense pact.
Jan. 5-9 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in New York aboard the Queen Mary luxury liner to begin talks with President Harry Truman in Washington. Churchill told the news media that the meetings were not an attempt to "get settlements or sign agreements." The purpose he said was "establish close and intimate understanding" so the two countries "may deal with events of the future with knowledge of each other's point of view."
Truman sends his plane "Independence" to New York to fly Churchill and his party to Washington. The first session was held aboard the presidential yacht Williamsburg on the Potomac River.
On Jan. 9 a joint communiqué summarized the substance of the talks:
Both countries agree to unite with each other and other free countries "to ensure peace and freedom" and "the strength of the free world."
Truman agrees to ask Britain's permission to employ A-bombs from U.S. bases in England. This was to assure the British population that they wouldn't suffer retaliation from Russia if the United States dropped nuclear bombs on the communists.
"We are willing to at any time to explore all reasonable means of resolving the issues which now threaten the peace of the world," communiqué read, but Truman makes it clear that this does not include talking to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin.
Churchill defends Great Britain's reason for recognizing communist China, a move that Truman also rejects.
Other items center around strengthening the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the British economy.
Jan. 7 -- Gen. Curtis LeMay, commander of the Strategic Air Command, tells a New York audience that "almost overnight the communists in the Korea area have become one of the major airpowers of the world."
Jan. 7-8 -- The N.Y. Times reports that production of new tanks for the Army is running six to nine months behind schedule. Production of the 25-ton Walker Bulldog and 50-ton M-47 tanks coming off production lines in Detroit, Cleveland and Schenectady, N.Y., are mounting up in depots because the turret control systems are "unacceptable" along with other engineering problems, the stories say.
Jan. 9 -- The Defense Department reports that U.S. casualties through Jan. 4 are 104,084, with 17,834 dead.
President Harry Truman delivers the State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress in the House chambers. He defends foreign aid as strengthening "the forces of freedom throughout the world" so the United States doesn't have to "stand alone against Soviet-dominated world." He says that poverty and hunger anyplace in the world breed "stomach communism."
He said that U.N. forces stopped red aggression in Korea without widening the war. Defense pacts with Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines in the Pacific and NATO in Europe are defense arrangements "to hold back the communist advance."
(Editor's note: Jim Caldwell is a senior writer for the TRADOC News Service.)
