From this time on, Syngman Rhee continued to be a patriot or became a major nuisance, depending on the vantage point from which he was viewed. Rhee never materially changed his demands, and he was to experience a continually worsening press in both Europe and America. Rhee, threatening again and again to block an armistice desired by most, became less and less a heroic old resistor of Communism and more and more a stubborn, opinionated old tyrant, determined to keep the West from getting what it wanted.
Actually, both Rhee and Korea were largely helpless. Not a U.N. member but a ward of that body, completely dependent upon American arms, fuel, munitions, and economic aid, the Taehan Minkuk had no chance of materially influencing U.S. policy. Willingly or not, Dr. Rhee had to continue as an American puppet or cease to exist.
But a certain amount of love was lost. With divergent aims, neither Washington nor Seoul now fully trusted the other.
Kim II Sung, Supreme Commander of the Inmun Gun, and Peng Teh-huai, Commander of Chinese Volunteers—whose name until that day was unknown to U.N. intelligence—radioed on 1 July 1951, agreeing to a meeting, not at sea, as Ridgway desired, but at Kaesong.
Kaesong was three miles below the parallel and a few miles inside Communist lines; north of Seoul, it lay athwart the main north-south corridor through western Korea, along the main invasion route.
The United Nations Command, not caring to be technical, accepted Kaesong. It was to learn that Communists propose nothing, not even truce sites, without an eye to their own advantage.
On 8 July Colonel James C. Murray, USMC; Jack Kinney, an Air Force colonel; and Colonel Lee Soo Young, ROK Army, representing the U.N. command, met with a Colonel Chang of the Communists at a teahouse on the outskirts of rubble-strewn Kaesong. All agreed that the principals to negotiate a possible cease-fire would meet at Kaesong at 1100 on 10 July.
On that date, Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy designated by General Ridgway as the Senior UNC Delegate, said to newsmen as he left Munsan-ni:
'We, the delegates from the United Nations Command, are leaving for Kaesong fully conscious of the importance of these meetings to the entire world. We are proceeding in good faith prepared to do our part to bring about an honorable armistice, under terms that are satisfactory to the United Nations Command.'
The seventeen nations with fighting forces in Korea had already met, and agreed on terms, which in essence were to freeze the fighting and forces where they stood, form a demilitarized zone in the vicinity of the parallel, exchange of prisoners, and the establishment of an international commission with access to supervise any truce.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, meanwhile, had explicitly instructed Ridgway not to discuss any political or territorial questions with the enemy. Not to be discussed were the seating of Red China in the U.N., Red claims to Taiwan, or any permanent division of Korea, or the 38th parallel as a political boundary.
From the American and U.N. point of view, the sole purpose of the meetings at Kaesong was to end the bloodshed, and to create some sort of machinery to supervise such an armistice. This done, an entirely separate body would sift the political and territorial questions posed by the Korean situation, in an atmosphere of peace.
Americans, even the knowledgeable Dean Acheson, had once again tried to separate peace and war into neat compartments, to their sorrow.
Assembled with Admiral Joy were Major General Laurence C. Craigie, USAF; Major General Henry I. Hodes, USA; Rear Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, USN; and Major-General Paik Sun Yup, ROK Army. Not one of these men was other than a military commander; not one was in any respect a diplomat or politician. They were soldiers, come to forge a military agreement to end the killing.
On the other side of the famous green table at Kaesong was a formidable array of Communist talent: General Nam II, North Korea Senior Delegate; Major General Chang Pyong San, North Korea; Major General Lee Sang Cho, North Korea; Lieutenant General Tung Hua, Chinese Volunteers; and Major General Hsieh Fang, also Chinese. Several of these men were graduates of Soviet universities, and not one was a fighting man.
All had held political posts, and with typical Communist deviousness, seemingly the junior man at the table in rank, Hsieh Fang, was the man who actually held the Communist cards.
Immediately, it became apparent that the Communist delegation intended not only to discuss the proposed cease-fire but everything up to and including the kitchen drain. Immediately, they would not agree to an agenda. Immediately, they made sharp protest at Turner Joy's use of the word 'Communists'—there were no 'Communists' in Kaesong, but only Inmun Gun and Chinese Volunteers; on the other hand, they used such terms as 'that murderer Rhee' and 'the puppet of Taiwan' quite freely.
They insisted that the 38th parallel must be the new line of demarcation, although the U.N. armies in most places stood well above it—and the parallel, as had been proved, was hardly a defensible line—and that unless the United Nations Command ceased actual hostilities in Korea at once they could not discuss the armistice. They at once refused demands to permit the International Red Cross to inspect North Korean pow camps.
And from the selection of the site at Kaesong—in Communist hands, yet still below the parallel, one of the few spots in Korea where this condition obtained—the forcing of U.N. negotiators to enter Communist territory displaying white flags, as if they were coming to surrender, to the seating of Admiral Joy in a chair substantially lower than Nam II's, the enemy showed that nothing was too small to be overlooked, if it accrued to his advantage.
As best it could, without sabotaging the truce talks, the U.N. Command began to fight for its own ends. Its delegates had come in good faith, to make an honest end to the killing, with the settlements to come later.
The tragedy of the talks was that the Communists intended merely to transfer the war from the battlefield, where they were losing, to the conference table, where they might yet win something.
The United Nations' desire for peace was genuine—almost frantic. Nothing else could have kept their negotiators, subjected to harassment, stinging insult, and interminable delay, at the green table after the first few sessions.
On 8 July, when Colonels Jack Kinney and Chang Chun San arranged the first Plenary Session, the world had displayed conspicuous joy. Only the United States Government sought to dampen the enthusiasm a bit: the
Washington was still not seeing clearly. No one dared guess that it would take 159 plenary sessions and more than two years of haggling to end the killing.
Turner Joy, determined to succeed, said: 'Unless you come prepared to spend time you only shortchange yourself and those who depend on you. Time is the price you pay for progress.'
But time, above all, was what the Communist world needed in Korea in the summer of 1951.
And time, thirty fatal days, while the U.N. forces paused and marked time in expectation of immediate peace, was what they got.
Sometimes the price of progress comes high.
After the start of talks—first at Kaesong, then transferred to Panmunjom, in a neutral zone ten miles east at U.N. insistence—every action on the checkerboard of the Korean War would be made with one eye on the state of the front and one on the conference table.
Very soon, the U.N. Command was in quandary.
It wanted peace; the governments it represented wanted peace. The Communist world was willing to talk, even though it obstructed day to day, and while the talks went on there was always the hope of peace, eventually.
As Winston Churchill said, 'It is better to jaw, jaw, than war, war.'
But yet, with both armies in the field, lurking within gunshot of each other, with nothing settled, war could not wholly end.
The U.N. Command no longer looked for victory in the field. It had already been committed to settlement in the vicinity of the 38th parallel, though it insisted upon the present line of contact, not that indefensible, imaginary line of demarcation on the ground. If it flailed ahead now, made great gains, these would have already been compromised and might well be lost at the conference table. Ridgway and Van Fleet and Washington were loath to spend lives for nothing. Yet Ridgway and Van Fleet dared not sit still, letting their forces stagnate, despite Washington.
