Prisoners of War and the Peace Negotiations

Most of the prisoners of war (POWs) of the Korean War were taken during the first year of fighting, from mid-1950 to mid-1951. The United Nations (UN) forces, fighting for the South Koreans, had taken only about one thousand prisoners in the first two months of the war, while they were being pushed south by the North Korean People's Army (NKPA). After the successful landing at Inchon (see Chapter7) and the advance into North Korea, however, tens of thousands of prisoners were taken. By December 1950, the UN forces had taken more than 130,000 prisoners of war. Most of them were held in camps at Inchon and in the south at Pusan. When the Communist Chinese Forces (CCF) entered the war on the side of the North Koreans and began pushing the UN troops south again, the problem of what to do with prisoners became urgent. Depending on how far the enemy forced the UN to retreat, the camps might become difficult to maintain.

In February 1951, preparations for a prison camp began on an island off the coast of Korea, called Koje-do ("do" means island). The island, not very suitable for a prison camp, was rocky and hilly, inhabited by about 200,000 natives on about 150 square miles. The UN put up four barbed-wire enclosures on a large site on the island. Each of these was then separated into eight compounds. By April, 130,000 Korean and 20,000 Chinese prisoners were packed into Koje-do. This was more than five times as many people as the camp had room to hold.

At the prison camp at Koje-do, there was an unusually divided group of prisoners. Among both the North Koreans and the Chinese, there was a significant proportion of inmates who had defected to the UN side, creating a big split between communists and anticommunists. The North Korean Army sent agents—soldiers who allowed themselves to be captured—into the camp to organize the inmates and to make sure that principles of communism and anti-United States propaganda were promoted within the prisons. Governing bodies formed among the communist prisoners. In some cases, they held trials and the anticommunists were executed by the communists. Throughout the war, the Communist Chinese and the North Koreans kept open communication with their agents in the Koje prison camp.

The communists take prisoners

For the UN troops captured in battle, the prospects were very grim. Those captured in the first six months of the war had it the worst. The North Koreans forced them to march under very harsh conditions to the prison camps. POWs who could not make the long marches were generally shot as they dropped out of the line. There was little food, and the POWs were not provided clothing for the trip.

After the spring of 1951, China ran most of the prison camps in North Korea, which were situated along the Yalu River near the Korean border with China. The Chinese had more humanitarian ideas about prison camps and conditions improved, but the captured POWs' accounts of life in the Chinese prison camps are still nightmarish. Some of the prison cells were so crowded that if one soldier moved, everyone else was forced to move as well. There were no facilities for washing. Body lice and other parasites abounded. The communists were so low on supplies and medicines that their own soldiers and civilians were dying in great numbers. Food for the prisoners was often a small handful of ground meal that was mixed with water or snow to make a mash; once in a while the prisoners got a ball of rice. Many of the men developed dysentery, often caused by an infection that causes severe diarrhea, and could no longer force themselves to eat. Even those who were able to keep eating the meager fare in order to survive were severely malnourished. The disease beriberi, caused by a lack of nutrients and resulting in diarrhea and fever, was widespread in the camps. There was little or no medical care available to the prisoners in many camps, and death from sickness and hunger was commonplace.

In the communist camps, prisoners were subjected to intense indoctrination programs, lectures, discussion groups, and interrogations directed at converting the soldiers to communism and anti-Americanism. There were many attempts to get American soldiers to sign statements about American wrongdoing in the war, some of which were successful. Although the Chinese prided themselves on not using violence on the inmates, there were many cases in which their tactics were cruel and painful. POWs later described the process they were put through as "brainwashing": the enemy used carefully planned psychological techniques to try to change the way the prisoners thought.

Missing in action

Army intelligence investigations revealed that some American POWs were being taken to China. A classified army report (only select people could see it) dated December 15, 1951, only recently declassified in 1996, concluded that there were about twenty-five hundred American POWs in Manchuria, an area in northern China just north of the Korean border, and about fifteen hundred in other parts of China. "Specially selected groups are sent to China in relatively small numbers to undergo political indoctrination," the report,

which was quoted in the Detroit News on February 16, 1998, stated. "Of those POWs processed in Manchuria, the ones not going to China are apparently being sent to mines and labor camps in Manchuria itself. Because of obvious diplomatic complications, it follows that the communists would neither wish to return these men to U.S. control nor admit to their existence at this time." There were about eighty-one hundred American soldiers not accounted for at the end of the war, and it is possible that POWs in China make up some part of those missing.

Another much smaller group of the missing may have been taken to various places in the Soviet Union, never to return. (The Soviet Union was the first communist country and was made up of fifteen republics, including Russia. It existed as a unified country from 1922 to 1991.) During the war, some U.S. military aircraft were shot down by the Russians. There is evidence that the Soviets captured some of the pilots. Since the fall of communism in the Soviet Union in 1989, more and more Russian people are speaking up about encounters they had at that time with American soldiers in Russia. The Russians have worked with the United States to try to find out what happened to these soldiers, but so far there have been no solid results.

The truce talks focus on POWs

On December 11, 1951, the delegates at Panmunjom began to discuss the repatriation (sending home) of prisoners. The communists were not initially willing to provide a list of the UN prisoners they held, but the United States stood firm, and eventually the lists were exchanged. The UN list accounted for about 133,000 POWs: 95,531 North Korean, 20,700 Chinese, and 16,243 South Koreans who had been impressed (forced to enlist) into the North Korean Army. Another 44,000 South Koreans had been earlier reported as prisoners of war but were then reclassified (as South Koreans and not enemy troops) and released. The communists noted the discrepancy and claimed that the UN was withholding the 44,000 soldiers. The communist list, on the other hand, reported only 11,559 POWs: 3,198 American, 7,142 ROKs, and the rest other UN soldiers. The UN claimed that there were 88,000 ROKs and 11,500 U.S. troops missing in action. The communists explained the huge difference as the consequence of prisoner deaths by disease and by prison camps being bombed by UN aircraft (which was a frequent occurrence). They also claimed to have released many POWs.

The repatriation issue

By January 1952, the two sides agreed to exchange prisoners, but an unexpected problem arose almost immediately. The United States realized it was holding prisoners who did not want to be sent back to the communist countries. There were soldiers in the UN prison camps who were Nationalist Chinese who had been impressed into the communist forces. Many had surrendered to the Americans rather than fight for the communists. Another group of prisoners were South Koreans impressed into the North Korean Army when North Korea occupied the south. Americans argued that these groups risked severe reprisals (punishment) upon repatriation.

The communists were outraged at the suggestion. They felt that the Americans were trying to discredit them by saying that the POWs did not want to return. And not sending the POWs back conflicted strongly with the Geneva Conven tion of 1949, which stated that POWs were to be "repatriated without delay after cessation of hostilities." (The Geneva Con vention was a series of agreements about the treatment of pris oners of war and the sick, wounded, and dead in battle, signed by many nations.) Most of the U.S. State Department officials and Joint Chiefs of Staff (an agency within the Department of Defense serving to advise the president and the secretary of defense on matters of war) agreed that the idea of separating out the prisoners who did not want repatriation would be against the Geneva Convention and very difficult as well. But on this issue President Harry S. Truman stood firm: the United States would not force anyone to go back to a communist country who did not want to go. The communists stood just as firm on the principle of an all-for-all exchange of prisoners.

Unrest at Koje-do prison camp

In February 1952, U.S. troops at Koje-do began to screen the POWs to determine which prisoners would go along with repatriation. When the troops went into the compound that housed the core of the communist governing group, more than one thousand inmates attacked with homemade but deadly weapons. The troops began firing. In this incident, fifty-five Korean prisoners were killed, twenty-two died later, and one hundred forty were wounded. One American was killed and thirty-eight were wounded. At the tables in Panmunjom, the communist delegates loudly protested the "massacre" at Koje. In March, there was another incident at Koje, in which North Korean prisoners threw stones at Korean prisoners who were anticommunist. The Korean guards began shooting at the North Koreans, killing ten and wounding twenty-six, of whom two died later. Again the North Korean and Chinese delegates at Panmunjom raised an outcry.

The screening of POWs turned up many more prisoners who did not want to return to communist countries than expected, with 40,000 out of 132,000 opting not to go home. On April 28, the UN delegates presented a compromise package to the communists, offering to release the prisoners who were willing to be repatriated and, as a compromise, giving up any more demands about how the North Koreans rebuilt their airfields, a stumbling block in earlier negotiations. The communists, horrified at the huge number of prisoners the UN claimed to be unwilling to go home, rejected the package and the truce meetings were once again brought to a halt.

The kidnapping of the commander

Meanwhile, the ruling prisoner groups at Koje-do had been working out a plan. On May 7, 1952, the prison camp commander, Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd, went to see some inmates who claimed they had been beaten in one of the compounds. In a planned attack, the inmates kidnapped Dodd. The U.S. Army's response was to try to calm the prisoners; no one wanted a large revolt at this time. Dodd understood this from his cell and agreed to act as a go-between for the prisoners, helping them to present their demands to the United Nations. They treated Dodd well. In turn, they got telephone systems throughout the camp and a few vehicles. In the meantime, Eighth Army Commander General James A. Van Fleet (1892–1992) ordered a battalion of tanks to Kojedo. Brigadier General Charles Colson assumed command of the prison.

On May 9, the prisoners staged a trial for Dodd, in which he was charged with nineteen counts of death or injury to inmates. The next morning, as the trial continued, Colson prepared for a massive attack on the compound. But before it was launched, the prisoners sent out this crudely written list of demands, as quoted in Bevin Alexander's history Korea: The First War We Lost:

• Immediate ceasing the barbarous behavior, insults, torture, forcible protest with blood writing, threatening, confinement, mass murdering, gun and machine gun shooting, using poison gas, germ weapons, experiment object of A-bomb, by your command.
• Immediate stopping the so-called illegal and unreasonable repatriation of North Korean People's Army and Chinese People's Voluntary Army.
• Immediate ceasing the forcible [screening] which thousands of POWs of NKPA and CPVA be armed and falled in slavery.
• Immediate recognition of the P.W. Representative Group (Commission) consisted of NPKA and CPVA PW's and close cooperation to it by your command. This Representative Group will turn in Brig. Gen. Dodd, USA, on your hand after we receive satisfactory declaration to resolve the above items by your command. We will await your warm and sincere answer.

General Colson responded to these demands by delaying the attack and writing a letter back to them in which he denied that Americans had committed all the offenses listed in the prisoners' list of demands. He agreed to halt the repatriation screenings and asked that Dodd be freed by noon. Then he heard from Dodd himself, who argued that Americans had been responsible for POW deaths, and offered to write in the changes to Colson's letter that were demanded by the prisoners. Colson agreed. As it stood in the end, the letter stated that there had been many deaths at the hands of the UN personnel in the prison. It also promised that the inmates at Koje-do could expect "humane treatment." General Matthew B. Ridgway (1895–1993), commander of the UN Forces, tried to stop the signing of this letter, but it was too late. Victory was all on the side of the prisoners. The army tried to repudiate Colson's statement, and General Dodd was immediately relieved of command.

General Mark W. Clark (1896–1984), who had recently assumed command of the Far East Forces, was furious. He had both Colson and Dodd reduced to the rank of colonel and put a tough new commander in charge of Koje. The prisoners were placed in smaller compounds so there was less possibility of revolt. When the prisoners resisted being placed in smaller groups, armed troops forced them. In the violent uprising that followed, thirty-one prisoners were killed and many more were wounded; there was little resistance afterward. The troops who went into the prisoner's former quarters found the bodies of murdered inmates and thousands of weapons.

Where to Learn More

Alexander, Bevin. Korea: The First War We Lost. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986, revised edition, 2000.

Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953. New York, Times Books, 1987.

Deane, Hugh. The Korean War, 1945–1953. San Francisco: China Books, 1999.

Goulden, Joseph C. Korea: The Untold Story of the War. New York: Times Books, 1982.

Knox, Donald. The Korean War: Pusan to Chosin: An Oral History. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988.

Toland, John. In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950–1953. New York: William Morrow, 1991.

Web sites

Burns, Robert. "China Held U.S. POWs During Korean War, Army Reports Reveal." Detroit News. [Online] http://detnews.com/1998/nation/9802/16/02160106.htm (accessed on August 14, 2001).

United States Army. "African Americans in the Korean War." Fiftieth Anniversary of the Korean War Commemoration Site. [Online] http://korea50.army.mil/history/factsheets/afroamer.html (accessed on August 14, 2001).

Words to Know

beriberi: a disease caused by inadequate nutrition that attacks the digestive system as well as the heart and nervous system.

biological warfare: the act of spreading disease germs or other living organisms through enemy territory, using the germs as a weapon with which to kill or disable the enemy.

brainwashing: the use of carefully planned psychological techniques to try to change the way someone thinks and believes, often against the will of, or even without the knowledge of, the person.

classified: kept away from public view; being placed in a category (as a document) in which only select people have access to it.

commandant: commanding officer.

compound: a walled-in area within which there are buildings, usually places of residence.

dysentary: a disease caused by infection resulting in severe diarrhea.

Geneva Convention: a series of agreements about the treatment of prisoners of war and the sick, wounded, and dead in battle, signed by many nations.

humanitarian: promoting the good of humanity.

impressed: forced to enlist as a soldier.

indoctrination: to thoroughly teach or train someone with a particular, and onesided, set of beliefs, practices, or principles.

malnourished: having a poor diet lacking in proper nutrients, resulting in ill health.

parasite: an insect or animal that lives off another animal, usually hurting the host animal; a person who lives off someone else.

paratroopers: soldiers who are trained to jump from airplanes with parachutes.

repatriation: the act of sending someone (often prisoners of war) back to his or her own country.

reprisal: violence or other use of force by one side in a conflict in retaliation for something bad that was done by the other side; a system of getting even for harm done.

Killing the Enemy: The North Korean Forces

U.S. Marine private Ernest Gonzalez described an unofficial practice at the frozen Chosin Reservoir in the battles of November 1950:

Word was passed to kill all enemy wounded. I found one Chinese curled up, lying facedown. He had a head wound shaped like a perfect pie-cut that exposed his brain. I fired into his midriff. He turned slowly and looked at me as if saying, "Why must you make me suffer more?" Although it remained a common practice on both sides, I never again killed another wounded Chinese soldier.

Source: Donald Knox. The Korean War: Pusan to Chosin, An Oral History. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988.

Killing the Enemy: The United Nations Forces

In late October 1950, as the Eighth Army advanced into North Korea, a paratroop drop was organized to look for a group of American prisoners of war (POWs) being transported by the enemy to prison camps in the north. The following excerpt describes what was found of the United Nations' POWs:

The assistant commander of the First Cavalry Division, Brigadier General Frank A. Allen, Jr., and his party discovered a sad and sickening sight: around a railroad tunnel near Myongucham, about five miles northwest of Sunch'on, were the bodies of sixty-six American POWs who had been murdered and seven more American POWs who had either starved to death or died of disease. In addition, General Allen and his party found twenty-three Americans who had escaped from their North Korean captors, some of them critically wounded (two died during the first night).

The survivors told the story: two trains, each carrying about 150 American POWs, left Pyongyang on October 17, crawling slowly and repairing the heavily broken tracks as they went. These were survivors of a group of 370 Americans the North Koreans had marched north from Seoul shortly after the Inchon landing. Each day five or six Americans died of dysentery, starvation, or exposure. Their bodies were removed from the train. A few Americans escaped along the way. On October 20, while the paratroop drop [to save these prisoners] was in progress, the second of the two trains remained in the Myongucham tunnel. It still had about 100 Americans, crowded into open coal gondolas and boxcars. That evening, the North Korean guards took the Americans in three groups to get their evening meal. The North Koreans shot them down as they waited for it. Most of the Americans who survived did so by feigning [pretending] death. The guards and the train left that night.

Source: Bevin Alexander. Korea: The First War We Lost. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986, revised edition, 2000.

Claims of U.S. Use of Biological Warfare

In the spring of 1951, Brigadier General Crawford Sams, the public health and welfare chief of the United Nations (UN) Command in Tokyo, Japan, launched a highly secret mission in an epidemic-control ship equipped with medical laboratory facilities. Landing at Wonsan, he and his crew made a trip through the enemy territory. On his return, he announced that the army had received intelligence that there had been an outbreak of the bubonic plague on the east coast of North Korea, and he had gone to examine whether this was true. In April 1951, Newsweek magazine reported that "landing parties have been grabbing off numbers of Chinese Reds from the tiny islands of the harbor and taking them back to the ship, where they are tested for symptoms of the dread bubonic plague."

In February and March 1952, the communists accused the United States of engaging in biological warfare. They held that Sams had gone into North Korea to test out biological weapons on prisoners taken there. Among the weapons the Chinese and North Koreans accused the United States of using were a variety of germ-carrying insects and infected feathers, which were dropped from aircraft over North Korea and Manchuria, China. The United States flatly denied these claims.

Twenty-five U.S. soldiers being held as prisoners of war confessed to the communists that they had been involved with the germ warfare. After they were released, none of these prisoners ever went on to claim that their confessions were true. Many, but not all, retracted their confessions after their release, saying they had been coerced by the communists into making the confessions.

The Chinese and North Koreans raised a tremendous outcry about American inhumanity, both in the prison camps and with the use of germ warfare. It was certainly an advantageous time for them to rally worldwide opinion against the United States. However, the International Scientific Commission for the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in China and Korea created by the World Peace Council conducted a two-month investigation that corroborated the communists' allegations. Since that time, some very distinguished scientists and historians have concluded that the United States was guilty of biological warfare, especially when it came to light that the Japanese had shared their data on the subject with the United States. Other experts have concluded that there was no biological warfare in Korea. There is some evidence, but no solid proof, that the United States dropped fleas and spiders infested with deadly epidemic germs over enemy lands. This issue remains controversial.