Sudden Death at Checkpoint Three

Sudden Death at Checkpoint Three

"The loneliest spot in the world" is what some of the American guards call Checkpoint Three. It is located at the southern end of the Bridge of No Return, over which North and South Korean prisoners were exchanged as part of the agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953. Near by stands the bleak compound of Quonset huts and wooden buildings where the LJ.N. and North Korean commands hold their Military Armistice Commission meetings.

One morning last week, a contingent of eleven American and South Korean officers and security guards were escort ing five Korean workers while they trimmed foliage from a large poplar that partially blocked the view northward from an Allied guardhouse. At 10:45 a.m., according to the U.N. Command's subsequent account, a small group of North Koreans appeared at the site and demanded that the work be stopped. The Americans refused. A few minutes later, a truckload of some 30 additional North Korean troops arrived at the scene. An officer shouted "Chukyo!" --the order to kill. The North Koreans suddenly swarmed over the Americans and South Koreans, assaulting them with metal pikes, axes and ax handles. When the attack was over, two American officers, Captain Arthur G. Bonifas,* 33, and Lieut. Mark T. Barrett, 25, were dead of massive head injuries and stab wounds; four other Americans and five South Koreans were wounded. North Korea announced that five of its soldiers were wounded in the fracas.

Despite numerous deaths elsewhere in the DMZ, the killings were the first ever at the village of Panmunjom, where negotiators met for two nerve-racking years to work out the Korean ceasefire. President Ford condemned the action as "brutal and cowardly." Secretary of State Kissinger warned: "North Korea must bear full responsibility for all the consequences of its brutal action."

Official U.S. statements were quickly followed by some ominous military moves. U.S. military personnel on leave in South Korea were ordered back to their posts, where they went on "increased alert status." A squadron of F-4s (18 to 24 planes) was dispatched from Kadena, Okinawa, to Korea; so was a squadron of F-111s from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho; so was the carrier Midway from its position off Japan. Still, there was no indication whether the U.S. was preparing a retaliatory move or simply beefing up its strength in anticipation of more assaults by the North Koreans. "I'm not ruling anything in or out at all," said Defense Department Spokesman Tod R. Hullin. Added another Pentagon official: "The situation is fluid." The North Koreans ordered their forces into a state of combat readiness, saying the Americans' "premeditated scheme" at Panmunjom was "the prelude to the war adventure that the U.S. imperialist aggressors may perpetrate."

Bitter Rhetoric. In both Washington and Seoul, officials said they were mystified over the reasons for the North Korean attack. It is conceivable that it was simply a local controversy: the hostility along the DMZ is strong enough for the pruning of a tree to become a casus belli (see box). Beyond that, the Korean Communists have been unusually bitter lately in their rhetorical condemnations of the U.S. presence in South Korea. Last week, for example, the North Korean embassy in Peking twice issued warnings that "a critical situation" was developing in Korea and that war could break out "at any time." It seemed possible that the North Koreans were trying to provoke a retaliation that would rally sympathy for Pyongyang's demand--due to be made at the U.N. this fall--that the U.S. withdraw all its forces from South Korea.

Still, despite combat-ready armies poised on both sides of the DMZ, it seemed unlikely that a larger conflagration would result from last week's incident. In Seoul, reported TIME'S Tokyo Bureau Chief William Stewart, "there was little evidence of tension. The streets are clogged with traffic jams, the restaurants are full and on the sidewalks the crowds savor a late August breeze. The latest incident is shrugged off as worrisome but manageable." And in the DMZ last weekend, the North Koreans offered no resistance when American soldiers went out and chopped down that poplar tree near the Bridge of No Return.

* Bonifas' promotion to major came through on the very day he was killed.

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