town. He put the jeep in gear and roared south, speeding across the Imjin River to Munsan-ni.
The assault of the North Korean People's Army—the NKPA, in United States Army terminology—while completely coordinated did not fall everywhere at once. Rather, it came in a series of blows, beginning at exactly 0400 in the west and continuing eastward for more than an hour.
Since the South had been heavily infiltrated with line crossers and Communist agents, the NKPA without exception knew the location of every South Korean defense unit, and sent superior forces against it. And almost without exception, the assault took the ROK units by complete surprise.
Many officers, most American advisers, and a large number of enlisted men were absent on pass to Seoul or other towns. And while the ROK's had deployed four divisions along the border, only one of the three regiments of each division was actually occupying its preplanned defensive position. The remaining regiments generally were in reserve areas from ten to forty miles south of the parallel.
The armored fist of the NKPA, then, struck not only against an utterly surprised ROK army, but a ROK army not deployed for battle. This factor, even more than lack of equipment or status of training, was to be decisive.
At approximately 0600, KMAG HQ in Seoul received a radio message from the advisers of the ROK 17th Regiment on the Ongjin Peninsula west of Seoul. They reported: 'Regiment under heavy attack, about to be overrun.' They requested instructions. No orders had been issued to KMAG to cover the situation developing on Sunday morning. Were the American officers to fight alongside the ROK's, or merely to continue their advisory duties, or to withdraw, since this was a war of Korean against Korean?
Ambassador Muccio's feeling was that KMAG should stand aside, following the precedent set earlier in China's civil war. Two volunteer aviators from KMAG HQ flew the five Americans on the Ongjin Peninsula back to Seoul in light L-5 liaison planes.
The Ongjin Peninsula west of Seoul had been considered defensible, but within hours the remnants of Colonel Paik In Yup's 17th Regiment were evacuated by LST's to Inch'on.
Farther east, the assault that had awakened Captain Darrigo rolled up the defenses north of Kaesong. Only two companies of the ROK 12th Regiment were able to flee south across the Imjin River; the others were killed or captured. The remaining regiments of the ROK Ist Division, the 13th and 11th, were at Korangp'o-ri, fifteen miles east of Kaesong, and in reserve just north of Seoul. They were commanded by Colonel Paik Sun Yup, a very young but able officer.
At the time Captain Darrigo was watching the NKPA detrain in Kaesong, Colonel Paik and several of his staff were in Seoul, beating on the door of the KMAG compound where Darrigo's boss, Lieutenant Colonel Lloyd Rockwell, was sleeping. As soon as they had got Rockwell awake, the Koreans told him of the NKPA assault. Colonel Paik then got in touch with his 11th Regiment by phone and ordered it to move north to Munsan-ni, south of the Imjin River, and to take up already prepared defensive positions alongside its sister regiment at Korangp'o-ri.
In earlier discussions, both Rockwell and Paik had agreed that the 1st Division could hold against an attack from the north only on the south side of the Imjin. Now they and the staff proceeded immediately up to that river and ordered the bridges blown. But the NKPA was so close upon the rear of the retreating 12th Regiment that the order could not be executed.
The 11th and 13th regiments, by midmorning, were heavily engaged with the NKPA 1st Division and the 105th Armored Brigade. Korean soldiers were as brave as any, but they soon found they had no weapons to halt the Russian-built T-34 tanks. The 2,36-inch rocket launchers furnished them by the U.S. Army could not be counted on to penetrate the Russian armor, and they were very weak in artillery. But the 1st Division held at Korangp'o-ri.
ROK soldiers, seeing all else fail, seized packets of high explosive and threw themselves under tank treads, trying to disable the steel monsters. Others ran at the advancing tanks with satchel charges, or charges fixed to long poles. Still others leaped upon tank decks, and desperately attempted to pry open the turret hatches with iron bars and hooks, so that they might drop hand grenades inside. In open terrain, and against tanks deployed in number, such tactics were suicide. A tank or two slued aside or blew up, but the ROK soldiers died.
They died chopped down by the tank machine guns, or shot by the supporting NKPA infantry. They died shrieking under the tank treads. When almost a hundred had been killed in this manner, the desire to fight tanks barehanded began to leave the survivors.
Still the 1st Division held its ground. It was still holding, desperately, when disaster to the east forced it to withdraw.
The main attack of the NKPA burst down the Ch'orwon Valley toward the Uijongbu Corridor, the main gateway from the north to Seoul. On the left the 4th Division, NKPA, attacked southward along the Yonch'on- Tongduch'on-ni road into Uijongbu; on the right the 3rd Division moved along the P'och'onKurwha road. In front of each division roared and clanked a regiment of forty tanks.
A single ROK division, the 7th, with its 1st Regiment scattered along the parallel, its 9th Regiment at P'och'on, and its 3rd Regiment at Tongduch'onni, took the full force of the assault.
At 0830 a staff officer of the 7th Division radioed the ROK Minister of Defense in Seoul: 'We are under general attack and heavy artillery fire near the parallel. The enemy has already seized his initial objectives. We require immediate reinforcements. Our reserve is engaged.'
There were no reinforcements available, and there was no way to stop the onrushing tanks—no rivers, no ridges to bar the way. Fighting, the 7th Division fell back toward Uijongbu. By evening of 25 June, worried civilians there could hear the sound of guns, coming closer.
If Uijongbu fell, Seoul was defenseless.
Farther east, south of Hwach'on and the great Hwach'on Reservoir, near which NKPA II Corps had its headquarters, lay the ancient and lovely town of Ch'unch'on, atop whose Peacock Mountain was the most famous shrine in Korea, a building with bright-lacquered pillars and dull red roof tiles, which the South Koreans had turned into a library. Against Ch'unch'on II Corps threw its 2nd Division, without tank support.
The 2nd Division was to take Ch'unch'on no later than Sunday afternoon, while II Corps' 7th Division, which had tanks, was to attack toward Hongch'on, which lay southeast of the Shrine City.
The attack of the 7th Division south from Inje was immediately successful. What happened at Ch'unch'on, however, is significant.
The ROK 6th Division's 7th Regiment stood in dug-in concrete pillboxes and bunkers on the high, pine- covered ridges north of Ch'unch'on. The positions on Sunday morning were fully manned by grousing ROK soldiers; Colonel Kim Chong O, the division commander, had permitted no weekend passes. The American adviser, Lieutenant Colonel McPhail, was at Wonju with Division HQ. The 6th Division artillery was well trained.
The attack of the NKPA stalled in the mountains north of Ch'unch'on. Well-placed artillery fire shattered the NKPA 6th Regiment. There was no panic, no confusion among the defenders, who had been ready.
At midmorning, Colonel McPhail rushed up from Wonju to be on hand during the battle, and by late afternoon the reserve regiment of the 6th Division entered the town. Despite desperate attacks and bitter fighting, the NKPA 2nd Division could not force its way into Ch'unch'on.
With the fall of dark, there was annoyance in the Operations Post of II Corps at Hwach'on. Senior Colonel Lee was ordered to divert the 7th Division from its push toward Hongch'on and bring it back to join in the drive on Ch'unch'on. The 2nd Division, in only one day's fighting, had been badly mauled. It had suffered almost 40 percent casualties.
Fighting unsurprised, fully manned, and against troops without armor, the ROK Army was more than holding its own. For three days the ROK 6th Division would hold Ch'unch'on, retreating only when disaster to its east and west made its strongly held positions untenable.
Far across the peninsula, on the other side of the rugged and almost impassable Taebaek Range, the ROK 8th Division, which was stationed in coastal cities along the Sea of Japan, had been fighting Communist guerrillas. Several of its battalions were detached for service in the mountains on Sunday, 25 June; the others were stretched out from the parallel down to Samch'ok.
At first light on Sunday morning Korean staff officers burst in on Major George Kessler, adviser of the 10th Regiment. They told him, 'We are under heavy attack across the parallel!'
Before any moves could be made, reports by telephone said that enemy soldiers were landing on the coast both north and south of Samch'ok. Whatever might be happening along the parallel, this last was serious. Kessler
