Time Bomb

In the U.N. "peace camp" at Munsan last week, barefoot Korean carpenters began equipping the tents with board floors and walls, against the cold weather ahead.

Last July, when the truce talks got under way, the camp was pitched in an apple orchard which was off limits to U.N. correspondents. A U.S. briefing officer appeased their curiosity by showing them an apple from the orchard--the size of a walnut. There was an immediate spate of speculation on how big the apples would be when camp was broken, i.e., when the cease-fire was signed. Last week the apples were harvested by U.S. troops, packed in 25-lb. sugar sacks and handed out to Munsan villagers. And no cease-fire was in sight.

Kaesong Deadlock. At the conference table in the big tent at Panmunjom, there was rapid progress last week on item 2 on the agenda--the cease-fire line--which gave rise to some premature optimism. The Reds suddenly proposed a line which almost coincided with the U.N. proposal along most of the front. The Red concession meant that the allies could keep their hard-won mountain terrain (including Heartbreak Ridge) in the center and east. The Communists also agreed to the simile buffer zone along the line suggested by the U.N.

It was in the west that trouble lingered. Both the U.N. and the Reds proposed to hold Kaesong, the ancient, ruined town where the truce talks started. Apparently, the Reds wanted to keep Kaesong for face-saving reasons: it was the only sizable town they still held south of the 38th parallel. The U.N. wanted to keep it out of Red hands because the town and the neighboring heights control the western approach to Seoul.

General Hodes and Admiral Burke, the U.N. subcommitteemen, made three efforts to break the Kaesong deadlock. First, they repeated a previous offer to evacuate U.N.-held islands north of the 38th; they pointed out that this, plus their already proffered withdrawals on the central and eastern fronts, should be adequate compensation for Kaesong. The Reds refused. Next, the U.N. negotiators offered to pass the buffer zone directly through Kaesong--in other words, to make it a neutral city held by neither side. Again, the Reds refused. Finally, in mild desperation, the U.N. suggested that the line be left to drift with the battlefront and be adjusted as the last piece of business before signing the armistice. "Unfair," the Reds cried. A few days earlier, Matt Ridgway had told visiting diplomats that he was "never more confident of an early settlement."

Red Gulliver? Despite all this jockeying for position, it seemed likely that the Kaesong deadlock would yield to some sort of compromise and that the cease-fire line would be settled at last. But that would not, by any means, signal the end of the war. During all the fuss & fury over the cease-fire line, a time bomb in the agenda had been quietly ticking away: item 3, which concerns supervision of the truce arrangements, and which the U.N. believes must involve inspection by each side behind the opposing lines.

Judging by the record, Communists regard such inspection proposals not only as attempts to put spies behind their iron curtains, but as efforts to blast destructive holes in their closed systems. Inspection was where atomic-energy control broke down (Russia stood on her "sovereignty"). Since 1946 the Reds have kept U.N. commissions out of North Korea, and for the last 16 months have even barred Swiss representatives of the Red Cross.

If the U.N. strategists, having got what they regard as a defensible cease-fire line, are willing to settle for token inspections --periodic visits at times and places specified by the Reds--they might, possibly, get an early truce. But if they seek ironclad, treachery-proof guarantees against future attacks in Korea--if they are determined to truss up the Reds like Gulliver in Lilliput--the truce talks are likely to drag on or break down.

It looked like another hard winter, and a fighting winter, for the Eighth Army. Last week frontline troops snuggled down in their winter gear against the season's first snowfall, one to four inches.

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