Ready to Sign?

A skeptical and anxious world wondered whether more, than three years of fighting and two years of truce talking were at last nearly at an end. This week the Communist delegates at Panmunjom said that they were ready to talk about signing the Korean armistice.

The sudden break came after a week of secret sessions, punctuated by delays, recesses and recriminations, and accompanied by bloody warfare (see below). Nam II & Co. asked for, and stayed until they got, U.N. assurances and clarifications about Syngman Rhee's future behavior. Then over Peking radio they broadcast the details of the secret sessions so that they would be on record. The U.N. had been quite explicit.

The Answer Is Yes. Nam asked General Harrison (the U.N. senior delegate) if the South Koreans would cease fire and withdraw from the 2 1/2-mile-wide buffer zone within twelve hours of the signing. Harrison's answer: "The ROK forces will cease fire and withdraw." Would the U.N. Command abide by the armistice even if the ROKs started fighting again? Said Harrison: "The answer is yes." Was there any time limit on the ROK agreement not to wreck the truce? Harrison answered: "There is no time limit to the armistice."

The Communists were still nettled over Syngman Rhee's release of 27,000 North Korean prisoners, but said with an elaborately magnanimous air that they would not let this matter impede a truce any longer, though they reserved the right to bring it up again at the post-truce political conference.

The U.N. assurances of South Korean cooperation "will only be accepted at their face value," said Nam II. "If such a policy of connivance of the U.N. Command toward the South Korean government and forces continues, it is possible that the implementation [of the agreement] will continue to be obstructed, before or after the armistice . . . The Korean and Chinese side will . . . have the right to take action against aggression in self-defense . . ."

Unhappy ROKs. Despite this bristling and ambiguous language, the U.N. Command was "very encouraged." Outside the tent, South Korean newsmen could not conceal their unhappiness at the U.N. concessions. Their argument: that the agreement is an open invitation to let the Reds cuff South Korea about at will, while the U.N. withholds aid of all kinds; the ROKs could suffer huge losses just on the say-so of the Reds that they had been attacked first, and the harm done before the neutral commission could decide the issue.

Why, with the truce seemingly so near, were the Reds still attacking so fiercely on the battlefront? U.N. observers could think of several Communist motivations: 1) to wipe out a discomforting U.N. salient and get more territory for themselves; 2) to gain prestige in the closing hours; 3) to punish the ROKs--or rather to punish Rhee by bloodying the ROKs--and convince them they could get nowhere against Communist power if they fought alone.

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