Operation Flypaper

In Korea, U.N. forces, advancing cautiously toward the Manchurian border, were slowed down more by their own supply difficulties than by enemy resistance. The Chinese had so far failed to follow up their first stroke of intervention. Last week's estimates of Chinese strength indicated that the Chinese offensive had been neither so big nor so bold as U.N. commanders had believed, in the initial shock of meeting fresh Chinese units in North Korea.

On some fronts the no man's land between the armies was growing wider in spite of the slow, tentative advance by U.N. forces. Beyond Kapsan the U.S. troops pushed through Red lines to the Yalu River, effectively dividing enemy forces. A baffled Pentagon spokesman, asked by newsmen to explain Chinese strategy in Korea, described it as a "holding operation."

Holding for what? Conceivably the Chinese were awaiting a further buildup of their forces before a major push. In the face of the Korean winter and the strength of the U.N. armies facing them, this seemed unlikely. A better guess was that the Chinese in North Korea were there to pin down supplies that might otherwise be used in Indo-China, and to extort political concessions from the U.S. and the U.N.

How much they succeeded in extorting depended largely on how serious U.S. commanders considered the Chinese threat. In the Pentagon there was a great deal of unmilitary handwringing, accompanied by woebegone predictions that the Chinese intended to barrel right on south to Seoul and perhaps to Pusan. In Korea, however, the view was changing somewhat. The serious U.N. supply difficulties looked less serious when Chinese prisoners reported that their food and ammunition had run low a few days after they had crossed the border.

Meanwhile, the Red Chinese delegation to the U.N. was still making its leisurely way toward Lake Success, by way of Moscow. By terms which the Chinese Reds had made crystal clear, they were going to Lake Success to discuss only two matters: their charges of U.S. aggression in Formosa, and their charges of U.S. aggression in Korea.

Communist Boss Mao Tse-tung had little to lose in Korea. If his luck continued to hold (i.e., if Washington kept on appeasing him), he might come out of the Lake Success meeting with some rich prizes: maybe Formosa, maybe admission to the U.N.

It was at least clear that Washington jitters (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) had paid Mao handsome dividends for his relatively small Operation Flypaper in North Korea.

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