The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (15 page)

The US policy makers did not discuss the broader background of sharply rising tension on the peninsula, which in retrospect was a crucial factor in the clash. Within a little more than a year, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger had threatened North Korea with nuclear attack in response to ROK concern following the fall of Saigon, nuclear-capable F-111 swing-wing fighter-bombers had landed in South Korea for military exercises amid great publicity, and the United States and South Korea had staged Team Spirit 76, the first of a long-running series of large-scale joint maneuvers. The parachute drops, amphibious landings, and other maneuvers provoked a near-hysterical reaction from the North, which saw Team Spirit as a dress rehearsal for an invasion from the South.

On August 5, the day before the initial tree-cutting incident, North Korea had issued a lengthy government statement charging that the United States and South Korea were stepping up plans to invade the North. Pyongyang claimed they “have now finished war preparations and are going over to the adventurous machination to directly ignite the fuse of war.” The declaration was highly unusual, being only the third official government statement on a Korea peninsular issue since the armistice. Puzzled, several American intelligence analysts attempted to have a warning sent to US forces in Korea. However, this was not done.

For the policy makers in the White House meeting following the killings, the central topic was retaliation against North Korea. Kissinger, who had spoken with Ford by telephone, was in a brutal mood. “The important thing is that they beat two Americans to death and must pay the price,” the secretary of state announced. One participant in the meeting came out of it quoting Kissinger as saying, “North Korean blood must be spilled.”

According to the minutes of the meeting, the discussion was remarkably free from many of the restraints that complicated US policy making in other circumstances during the Cold War. There was no expression of concern about the potential for touching off a wider war, nor was there discussion of the likely reaction of China or the Soviet Union to American action. There was no discussion of the probable views of Japan or the ROK, or the repercussions for them. As for Pyongyang’s reaction, Kissinger observed that “it will be useful for us to generate enough activity so that the North Koreans begin to wonder what those crazy American bastards are doing or are capable of doing in this election year.”

Even before the meeting was convened, General Richard Stilwell, the US commander in Korea, had recommended one potential response: to return to the JSA and cut down “the damned tree,” as it was referred to during nearly all the governmental deliberations. This quickly won approval of the WASAG, but Kissinger wanted to do much more. After some discussion, the group set in motion—and Ford subsequently ordered—the raising of the American (and South Korean) alert status to greater readiness for war, deployment of a squadron of F-4 fighters from Okinawa and F-111 fighter-bombers from Idaho to Korea, preparations for “exercise” flights of B-52 heavy bombers from Guam to make practice bombing runs close to North Korea, and preparations for redeploying the aircraft carrier USS
Midway
from Japan to the Korean straits.

While deciding on this massive show of American force in the area—and the felling of the tree—the WASAG meeting left undecided the punitive military action that Kissinger favored and that he told the meeting Ford wished to explore. During the meeting Admiral Holloway suggested US forces could lay mines or seize a North Korean ship. Another participant, according to Hyland, suggested that a nuclear weapon be exploded at sea near the North Korean coast as a warning. In discussion with Kissinger following the meeting, Hyland suggested an air strike in the eastern end of the DMZ, “where it would be unexpected and where it would not necessarily touch off something we couldn’t handle.” Kissinger seemed interested.

At Kissinger’s request, the US military explored two other options for punitive American actions to be taken at the time of the tree cutting. One was to destroy the nearby Bridge of No Return, across which prisoners of war had moved at end of the Korean War, by artillery fire, demolition
charges, or precision-guided missiles. The other option was an artillery attack against the DMZ barracks of the North Korean border guards. Both were strongly opposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as putting UN and ROK forces at the DMZ at great risk.

The JCS, however, told Kissinger it was exploring other punitive options to use “precision guided air munitions, surface-to-surface missiles, and unconventional warfare (SEAL) teams to destroy North Korean installations of military or infrastructure significance” after the tree felling was complete. “Henry thought we were being wimpish” by simply cutting down the tree, recalled National Security Adviser Scowcroft, who was with Ford in Kansas City but in constant touch with Kissinger. After a second WASAG meeting to discuss US responses, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Clements and Admiral Holloway called at the White House to see Hyland, who recalled them “wringing their hands that we may be headed into another Korean War” by taking strong action. In a sentiment characteristic of many near the top of the government, they told Hyland, “These [North] Koreans are wild people.”

In the end, Ford decided against any military reprisals because of their potential for escalation into a general war on the Korean peninsula. He explained later, “In the case of Korea to gamble with an overkill might broaden very quickly into a full military conflict, but responding with an appropriate amount of force would be effective in demonstrating U.S. resolve.”

While the United States was pondering its course, the rival Korean states were reacting in very different ways. In response to the upgrading of American and South Korean alert status, North Korean radio broke into regular programming to announce that the entire army and reserve force was being placed into “full combat readiness.” A strict blackout was imposed in Pyongyang, and the populace was crowded into underground shelters as air raid sirens wailed. Front-line troops were prepared for battle. Senior North Korean officials were evacuated into previously prepared and fortified tunnels.

Immediately after the incident, North Korea publicly began describing the clash as a “melee,” giving itself room to step back from a larger confrontation. Also, the North quickly agreed to a meeting of the Military Armistice Commission to discuss the clash. This suggested to Stilwell, he told the Pentagon privately, that the killings might well have been “a spontaneous, low-level overreaction” by North Korean guards. Interestingly, the GDR Embassy in Pyongyang had reached much the same conclusion.
*

In Seoul President Park was privately furious at the killings, writing in his diary that “I cannot tolerate this barbaric act by crazy Kim Il Sung’s gangs. . . . You stupid, cruel, violent gangs—you should know there is a limit to our patience. Mad dogs deserve clubs.” In an initial meeting to discuss the military response, however, Park impressed General Stilwell as “calm, deliberate and positive throughout.” Park advocated both “the strongest possible protest” to Pyongyang, including demands for an apology, reparations, and guarantees against repetition, all of which he admitted were not likely to be forthcoming, and “appropriate counteraction” by military force to teach North Korea a lesson, but without the use of firearms. Stilwell believed Park did not wish to break the long-standing ban on using firearms in the Joint Security Area.

To improve the balance of forces there without introducing heavy arms barred by agreement from the DMZ, Park offered—and Stilwell accepted—the services of ROK unarmed special forces troops with multiple black-belt honors in
tae kwon do
as reinforcements in case of trouble. (As it turned out, the “unarmed” ROK troops were carrying grenades and had M16 rifles, antitank weapons, grenade launchers, and light machine guns hidden as they moved into action. The Americans only found out by accident when they came upon the troops trashing an empty North Korean guardhouse on the way to the jumping-off point.) In a second meeting to go over Stilwell’s plans, Park expressed a firm belief that the military response should be limited to removal of the poplar tree and that “escalation should only evolve if the North escalates.” Otherwise, he added, “the matter drops.”

At 7:00
A.M.
August 21, three days after the killings, a convoy of twenty-three American and South Korean vehicles rolled into the JSA to begin what was named Operation Paul Bunyan. Aboard was a sixteen-member US engineering team with chain saws and axes, who immediately began working on the massive trunk of the poplar and also removing two unauthorized barriers the North had erected in the JSA. Accompanying the US team was a thirty-man security platoon armed with pistols and ax handles and sixty-four ROK special forces troops.

This little band, with its narrowly limited mission, was backed up by a mighty array of forces appropriate to the initiation of World War III. Hovering overhead was a US infantry company in twenty utility helicopters, accompanied by seven Cobra attack helicopters. Behind them on the horizon were the B-52 bombers, escorted by the US F-4 fighters and ROK F-5 fighters. Waiting on the runway at Osan Air Base, armed and fueled, were F-111 fighter-bombers. The
Midway
aircraft-carrier task force was stationed offshore. On the ground at the approaches to the DMZ waited heavily armed US and ROK infantry, armor, and artillery forces.

Stilwell’s battle plan, approved by Washington, called for mortar and artillery fire to cover the withdrawal of the tree-cutting force in case KPA
guards resisted the operation with small arms. Under a last-minute White House order, American artillery were to open fire on the North Korean guard barracks in the DMZ in case of armed resistance. In the event of a KPA ground attack, the backup forces were to assist the withdrawal of all UN elements from the JSA while hundreds of rounds of heavy artillery rained down on nearby North Korean targets. That would have been the opening round of a wider war.

Five minutes into the operation, North Korean officials of the Military Armistice Commission were formally notified that a UN work party would enter the JSA “in order to peacefully finish the work left unfinished” on August 18. If not molested, the notification said, the UN force would take no further action. Within a few minutes, five North Korean trucks and about 150 troops armed with automatic weapons gathered on the far end of the Bridge of No Return, looking across at the poplar. The troops watched in silence as the big tree was felled in forty-two minutes, three minutes fewer than Stilwell had estimated.

“We know it was very scary to the North Koreans, because we were listening,” said an American official in Washington with access to North Korean front-line communications. A US intelligence analyst monitoring the radio net said that “it blew their fucking minds.”

The North Korean leadership quickly recognized that the killings at the DMZ were a dangerous mistake and moved to reduce the danger. Kim Il Sung claimed later that the Americans had started the fighting to help Ford win the US presidential election but that the incident “no sooner happened than we realized that our soldiers had been taken in by the enemy’s political scheme. So, we decided not to aggravate the incident any further.”

Within an hour after the operation, the senior North Korean representative to the armistice commission requested a private meeting with the chief American representative, Rear Admiral Mark Frudden, to convey a message from Kim Il Sung. The personal message was Kim’s first to the UN Command in the twenty-three-year history of the armistice. Kim declared it “regretful” that an incident had occurred in the JSA and proposed that “both sides should make efforts” to avoid future clashes. The State Department initially rejected the message as unacceptable because it did not forthrightly admit guilt, but then reversed itself after Habib and other Korea experts said that it was as close to an apology from Kim that anyone would get.

On August 25, in another surprise, North Korea proposed that to prevent future incidents, the Joint Security Area be divided at the military demarcation line, and that thenceforth KPA guards stay north of the line and UN guards should stay south. The UN Command had made similar proposals in the past, but North Korea had not agreed. This time
the concept was approved and details worked out with a minimum of controversy.

In the aftermath, some in the South harshly criticized the United States for not taking stronger action. As his fears subsided in the face of the US buildup and North Korea’s soft reaction, Park’s belligerence toward North Korea seemed to grow. Questioned about Park’s attitude at a White House meeting in mid-September, Sneider said that Park has “a parochial, Israeli complex stemming in part from the protection we have accorded to Korea for so long—Park tends to ignore or discount the costs we have to calculate in deciding how to react to North Korean provocations.” The ambassador added, “Park may also have been influenced by his generals who were egging him on.”

With different decisions in Washington on punitive actions or Kim Il Sung’s statement of regret, the killings in the DMZ might have led to a wider conflict on the peninsula with unknown results. A different set of decisions by Kim or a subordinate commander—especially an attempt to contest Operation Paul Bunyan with force of arms—would almost certainly have led to a sharp escalation.

As it was, the assertions of US power and authority—secretly against South Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and very openly against North Korea’s barbaric actions in the Joint Security Area—demonstrated that despite its failure in Indochina, the United States continued to be a potent force on the Korean peninsula. Washington did not, however, heed Ambassador Sneider’s call to establish a more durable partnership with the ROK. Instead, US policy in the period to come intensified the discord between Washington and Seoul.