THE KOREAN WAR

YEARS OF STALEMATE

July 1951–July 1953
Introduction

The Korean War was the first major armed clash between Free

World and Communist forces, as the so-called Cold War turned hot. The

half-century that now separates us from that conflict, however, has

dimmed our collective memory. Many Korean War veterans have considered themselves forgotten, their place in history sandwiched between the

sheer size of World War II and the fierce controversies of the Vietnam

War. The recently built Korean War Veterans Memorial on the National

Mall and the upcoming fiftieth anniversary commemorative events

should now provide well-deserved recognition. I hope that this series of

brochures on the campaigns of the Korean War will have a similar effect.

The Korean War still has much to teach us: about military preparedness, about global strategy, about combined operations in a military

alliance facing blatant aggression, and about the courage and perseverance of the individual soldier. The modern world still lives with the consequences of a divided Korea and with a militarily strong, economically

weak, and unpredictable North Korea. The Korean War was waged on

land, on sea, and in the air over and near the Korean peninsula. It lasted

three years, the first of which was a seesaw struggle for control of the

peninsula, followed by two years of positional warfare as a backdrop to

extended cease-fire negotiations. The following essay is one of five

accessible and readable studies designed to enhance understanding of

the U.S. Army’s role and achievements in the Korean conflict. 

During the next several years the Army will be involved in many

fiftieth anniversary activities, from public ceremonies and staff rides to

professional development discussions and formal classroom training.

The commemoration will be supported by the publication of various

materials to help educate Americans about the war. These works will

provide great opportunities to learn about this important period in the

Army’s heritage of service to the nation.

This brochure was prepared in the U.S. Army Center of Military

History by Andrew J. Birtle. I hope this absorbing account, with its list

of further readings, will stimulate further study and reflection. A complete listing of the Center of Military History’s available works on the

Korean War is included in the Center’s online catalog:

www.army.mil/cmh-pg/catalog/brochure.htm.

JOHN S. BROWN

Brigadier General, USA

Chief of Military History
Years of Stalemate

July 1951–July 1953

The first twelve months of the Korean War (June 1950–June 1951)

had been characterized by dramatic changes in the battlefront as the

opposing armies swept up and down the length of the Korean peninsula.

This war of movement virtually ended on 10 July 1951, when representatives from the warring parties met in a restaurant in Kaesong to negotiate an end to the war. Although the two principal parties to the conflict—the governments of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

(North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea)—were

more than willing to fight to the death, their chief patrons—the People’s

Republic of China and the Soviet Union on the one hand and the United

States and the United Nations (UN) on the other—were not. Twelve

months of bloody fighting had convinced Mao Tse-tung, Joseph V.

Stalin, and Harry S. Truman that it was no longer in their respective

national interests to try and win a total victory in Korea. The costs in

terms of men and materiel were too great, as were the risks that the conflict might escalate into a wider, global conflagration. Consequently,

they compelled their respective Korean allies to accept truce talks as the

price for their continued military, economic, and diplomatic support. 

For the soldiers at the front and the people back home, the commencement of negotiations raised hopes that the war would soon be over,

but such was not to be. While desirous of peace, neither side was willing

to sacrifice core principles or objectives to obtain it. The task of finding

common ground was further complicated by the Communists’ philosophy of regarding negotiations as war by other means. This tactic significantly impeded the negotiations. And while the negotiators engaged in

verbal combat around the conference table, the soldiers in the field continued to fight and die—for two more long and tortuous years. 

Strategic Setting

The advent of truce talks in July 1951 came on the heels of a successful United Nations offensive that had not only cleared most of South

Korea of Communist forces but captured limited areas of North Korea

as well. By 10 July the front lines ran obliquely across the Korean peninsula from the northeast to the southwest. In the east, UN lines anchored

on the Sea of Japan about midway between the North Korean towns of

Kosong and Kansong. From there the front fell south to the

“Punchbowl,” a large circular valley rimmed by jagged mountains,
Unsan

38° 38°

T a e b

a

e k

M t s

MANCHURIA

Hyesanjin

Ch’osan

Hagaru-ri

Hungnam

Iwon

Wonsan

Sinuiju

Chongju Sinanju

P’YONGYANG

Kaesong

Ch’orwon

Munsan-ni

Uijongbu

Ch’unch’on

Hongch’on

Suwon

Osan

Ch’ungju

Wonju

Chech’on

Samch’ok

Ulchin

Andong

Yangyang

Kansong

Kosong

Kumhwa

P’yonggang

P’ohang-dong

Taegu

PUSAN

Miryang

Masan

Mokp’o

Kunsan

Taejon

SEOUL

Inch'on

an gjin

Ch R

CHANGJIN

(CHOSIN) RES

Ch’ongch’on

R

Taedo ng

Taeryong

Kur

R

R

yong

R Yalu R

Yesong R

Imjin R

Han

R

Naktong

R

Kum

R

YELLOW

SEA

K O R E A

S T R A I T

SEA

O F

JAPAN

KOREA

High Ground

Above 200 Meters

0 50 MILES
before heading west across the razor-backed Taebaek Mountains to the

“Iron Triangle,” a strategic communications hub around the towns of

P’yonggang, Kumhwa, and Ch’orwon. From there the front dropped

south once again through the Imjin River Valley until it reached the

Yellow Sea at a point roughly twenty miles north of Seoul. Manning this

line were over 554,000 UN soldiers—approximately 253,000 Americans

(including the 1st Marine, 1st Cavalry, and 2d, 3d, 7th, 24th, and 25th

Infantry Divisions), 273,000 South Koreans, and 28,000 men drawn

from eighteen countries—Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia,

Ethiopia, France, Great Britain, Greece, India, Luxembourg, the

Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand,

Turkey, and the Union of South Africa. Facing them were over 459,000

Communist troops, more than half of whom were soldiers of the

Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). 

Since the political leaders of the two warring coalitions had signaled their willingness to halt the fighting, the generals on both sides

proved reluctant to engage in any major new undertakings. For the

most part the commander of UN forces, General Matthew B. Ridgway,

and his principal subordinate, General James A. Van Fleet, Eighth

Army commander, confined their activities to strengthening UN positions and conducting limited probes of enemy lines. Their Communist

counterparts adopted a similar policy. Consequently, the two sides

exchanged artillery fire, conducted raids and patrols, and occasionally

attempted to seize a mountain peak here or there, but for the most part

the battle lines remained relatively static. 

So too, unfortunately, did the positions of the truce negotiators,

who were unable to make any progress on the peace front during the

summer. The chief stumbling block was the inability of the parties to

agree on a cease-fire line. The Communists argued for a return to the

status quo ante—that is, that the two armies withdraw their forces to

the prewar boundary line along the 38th Parallel. This was not an

unreasonable position, since the combat lines were not all that far from

the 38th Parallel. The UN, however, refused to agree to a restoration of

the old border on the grounds that it was indefensible in many places.

Current UN positions were much more defensible, and a more defensible border was clearly advantageous, not only in protecting South

Korea in the present conflict, but in discouraging future Communist

aggression. Consequently, UN negotiators argued in favor of adopting

the current line of contact as the cease-fire line. 

A deadlock immediately ensued, with the Communists employing every conceivable artifice to undermine the UN position. They

argued over every point, large and small, procedural as well as sub5
stantive, in an effort to wear down the UN negotiators. They hurled

insults and engaged in hours of empty posturing. They released scurrilous propaganda, staged provocative incidents, and exploited any

misstep or accident on the part of the UN to their full advantage, all

in an effort to embarrass, discredit, and entrap the UN negotiators.

While more restrained in their behavior, the American-led negotiating team refused to be intimidated by Communist negotiating tactics.

When the two sides finally tired of trading accusations, they would

sit and stare at each other over the conference table in absolute

6

38°

XXXX

63

XXXX

60

XXX

NK IV

XXXX

NK CHO

XX

ROK 1(+)

XXXX

EIGHTH

XXXX

12

XXXX

15

XXXX

47

XXXX

65

XXXX

64

XXX

NK VI

XXX

NK I

X

X

BRIT 29(+

XX

PLA

PLA

PLA

PLA

PLA

PLA

PLA

P’YONGYANG

Haeju

Chinnamp’o

Sariwon

Ongjin

Taedong R

Yesong R

Imjin R

YELLOW

SEA

SEOUL

Uijongbu

C

Inch’on

Kaesong

Han R

P’anmunjom

Iro

Trian

THE FRONT LINES

10 July 1951

Eighth Army Front

ELEVATIONS IN METERS

0

2010010 30 40

10 0 10 20 40

200 500 1000 AND ABOVE

KILOMETERS

MILES
silence for hours on end. Finally, on 23 August the Communists

broke off the negotiations. 

Operations

The UN Summer/Fall Offensive, July–November 1951

If the Chinese and North Koreans had hoped to intimidate the

United Nations into making concessions, they were very much mistaken. Rather than rewarding Communist misbehavior by beseeching the

7

38°

XX

ROK 2

XX

ROK 11

XX

ROK 3

XXXX

26

XXXX

42

XXXX

20

XXXX

27

XXX

NK V

XXX

NK II

XXX

NK III

XXX

NK VII

TURK

+)

1(+)

XX

25

XX

3(+)

XX

2

XX

24

XX

ROK 6

XX

ROK 8

XX

ROK 7

XX

ROK 5(+)

XX

ROK CAP

XX

1 MAR(+)

XX

7

PLA

PLA

PLA

PLA

Wonsan

P’yonggang

Yangyang

Kangnung

Samch’ok

SEA

O F

JAPAN

Ch’unch’on

Kosong

Kojo

Kumhwa

h’orwon

T

A

E

B

A

E

K

M

O

U

N

T

A I N

S

Han R

Kansong

HWACH’ON

RESERVOIR

Mundung-ni

Punchbowl

Kumsong Yongmi n

gle
enemy to return to the bargaining table, the United Nations Command

decided to chastise him by launching a limited offensive in the late summer and early fall of 1951. Militarily, the offensive was justified on the

grounds that it would allow UN forces to shorten and straighten sections

of their lines, acquire better defensive terrain, and deny the enemy key

vantage points from which he could observe and target UN positions.

But the offensive also had a political point to make—that the United

Nations would not be stampeded into accepting Communist proposals. 

Much of the heaviest fighting revolved around the Punchbowl,

which served as an important Communist staging area. The United

Nations first initiated limited operations to seize the high ground surrounding the Punchbowl in late July. By mid-August the battle had

begun to intensify around three interconnected hills southwest of the

Punchbowl that would soon be known collectively as Bloody Ridge.

Three days after the Communists walked out of the Kaesong talks, the

ROK 7th Division captured Bloody Ridge after a week of heavy combat. It was a short-lived triumph, for the following day the North

Koreans recaptured the mountain in a fierce counterattack. Determined

to wrest the heavily fortified bastion from the Communists, Van Fleet

ordered the U.S. 2d Infantry Division’s 9th Infantry to scale the ridge.

The battle raged for ten days, as the North Koreans repulsed one

assault after another by the increasingly exhausted and depleted 9th

Infantry. Finally, on 5 September the North Koreans abandoned the

ridge after UN forces succeeded in outflanking it. Approximately

15,000 North Koreans and 2,700 UN soldiers were killed, wounded, or

captured on Bloody Ridge’s slopes. 

After withdrawing from Bloody Ridge, the North Koreans set up

new positions just 1,500 yards away on a seven-mile-long hill mass

that was soon to earn the name Heartbreak Ridge. If anything, the

enemy’s defenses were even more formidable here than on Bloody

Ridge. Unfortunately, the 2d Division’s acting commander, Brig. Gen.

Thomas de Shazo, and his immediate superior, Maj. Gen. Clovis E.

Beyers, the X Corps commander, seriously underestimated the

strength of the North Korean position. They ordered a lone infantry

regiment—the 23d Infantry and its attached French battalion—to

make what would prove to be an ill-conceived assault straight up

Heartbreak’s heavily fortified slopes.

The attack began on 13 September and quickly deteriorated into a

familiar pattern. First, American aircraft, tanks, and artillery would

pummel the ridge for hours on end, turning the already barren hillside

into a cratered moonscape. Next, the 23d’s infantrymen would clamber

up the mountain’s rocky slopes, taking out one enemy bunker after

8
9

another by direct assault. Those who survived to reach the crest

arrived exhausted and low on ammunition. Then the inevitable counterattack would come—wave after wave of North Koreans determined

to recapture the lost ground at any cost. Many of these counterattacks

were conducted at night by fresh troops that the enemy was able to

bring up under the shelter of neighboring hills. Battles begun by

bomb, bullet, and shell were inevitably finished by grenade, trench

knife, and fist as formal military engagements degenerated into desperate hand-to-hand brawls. Sometimes dawn broke to reveal the

defenders still holding the mountaintop. Just as often, however, the

enemy was able to overwhelm the tired and depleted Americans, tumbling the survivors back down the hill where, after a brief pause to

rest, replenish ammunition, and absorb replacements, they would

climb back up the ridge to repeat the process all over again. 

And so the battle progressed—crawling up the hill, stumbling

back down it, and crawling up once again—day after day, night after

night, for two weeks. Because of the constricting terrain and the narrow confines of the objectives, units were committed piecemeal to the

fray, one platoon, company, or battalion at a time. Once a particular

Bloody Ridge (National Archives)
element had been so ground up that it could no longer stand the strain,

a fresh unit would take its place, and then another and another until the

23d Infantry as a whole was fairly well shattered. Finally, on 27

September the 2d Division’s new commander, Maj. Gen. Robert N.

Young, called a halt to the “fiasco” on Heartbreak Ridge as American

planners reconsidered their strategy. 

The 23d Infantry’s failure to capture Heartbreak Ridge had not

come from a lack of valor. It took extreme bravery to advance up

Heartbreak’s unforgiving slopes under intense enemy fire. And when

things did not go right, it took equal courage to take a stand so that others might live. One person who took such a stand was Pfc. Herbert K.

Pililaau, a quiet, six-foot-tall Hawaiian. Pililaau’s outfit, Company C, 1st

Battalion, 23d Infantry, was clinging to a small stretch of Heartbreak’s

ridge top on the night of 17 September when a battalion of North

Koreans came charging out of the darkness from an adjacent hill. The

company fought valiantly, but a shortage of ammunition soon compelled

it to retreat down the mountain. After receiving reinforcements and a

new issue of ammunition, the Americans advanced back up the ridge.

North Korean fire broke the first assault, but Company C soon

regrouped and advanced again, recapturing the crest by dawn. The pendulum of war soon reversed its course, however, and by midday the men

of Company C were once again fighting for their lives as the North

Korean battalion surged back up the hill. Running low on ammunition,

the company commander called retreat. Pililaau volunteered to remain

behind to cover the withdrawal. As his buddies scrambled to safety,

Pililaau wielded his Browning automatic rifle with great effect until he

too had run out of ammunition. He then started throwing grenades, and

when those were exhausted, he pulled out his trench knife and fought on

until a group of North Korean soldiers shot and bayoneted him while his

comrades looked on helplessly from a sheltered position 200 yards

down the slope. Determined to avenge his death, the men of Company C

swept back up the mountain. When they recaptured the position, they

found over forty dead North Koreans clustered around Pililaau’s corpse.

Pililaau’s sacrifice had saved his comrades, and for that a grateful

nation posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor. Yet his valiant

act could not alter the tactical situation on the hill. As long as the

North Koreans could continue to reinforce and resupply their garrison

on the ridge, it would be nearly impossible for the Americans to take

the mountain. After belatedly recognizing this fact, the 2d Division

crafted a new plan that called for a full division assault on the valleys

and hills adjacent to Heartbreak to cut the ridge off from further reinforcement. Spearheading this new offensive would be the division’s

10
72d Tank Battalion, whose mission was to push up the Mundung-ni

Valley west of Heartbreak to destroy enemy supply dumps in the vicinity of the town of Mundung-ni. 

It was a bold plan, but one that could not be accomplished until a

way had been found to get the 72d’s M4A3E8 Sherman tanks into

the valley. The only existing road was little more than a track that

could not bear the weight of the Shermans. Moreover, it was heavily

mined and blocked by a six-foot-high rock barrier built by the North

Koreans. Using nothing but shovels and explosives, the men of the

2d Division’s 2d Engineer Combat Battalion braved enemy fire to

clear these obstacles and build an improved roadway. While they

worked, the division’s three infantry regiments—9th, 38th, and

23d—launched coordinated assaults on Heartbreak Ridge and the

adjacent hills. By 10 October everything was ready for the big raid.

The sudden onslaught of a battalion of tanks racing up the valley

took the enemy by surprise. By coincidence, the thrust came just

when the Chinese 204th Division was moving up to relieve the North

Koreans on Heartbreak. Caught in the open, the Chinese division

suffered heavy casualties from the American tanks. For the next five

days the Shermans roared up and down the Mundung-ni Valley, over11

Heartbreak Ridge (National Archives)
running supply dumps, mauling troop concentrations, and destroying

approximately 350 bunkers on Heartbreak and in the surrounding

hills and valleys. A smaller tank-infantry team scoured the Sat’ae-ri

Valley east of the ridge, thereby completing the encirclement and

eliminating any hope of reinforcement for the beleaguered North

Koreans on Heartbreak. 

The armored thrusts turned the tide of the battle, but plenty of

hard fighting remained for the infantry before French soldiers captured

the last Communist bastion on the ridge on 13 October. After a month

of nearly continuous combat, the 2d Division was finally king of the

hill. All totaled the division suffered over 3,700 casualties, nearly half

of whom came from the 23d Infantry and its attached French battalion.

Conversely, the Americans estimated that they had inflicted 25,000

casualties on the enemy in and around Heartbreak Ridge. 

While the Punchbowl was the scene of some of the hardest fighting during the UN’s summer-fall offensive, the United Nations was

not idle elsewhere. Along the east coast South Korean troops succeeded in pushing north to the outskirts of Kosong, while in the west

five UN divisions (ROK 1st, British 1st Commonwealth, and U.S.

1st Cavalry and 3d and 25th Infantry) advanced approximately four

miles along a forty-mile-wide front from Kaesong to Ch’orwon,

12

Sat’ae-ri

Mundung-ni

Pia-ri

So-ch’on R

Suip- ch’on R

Punchbowl

J-Ridge

Bloody

Ridge

Heartbreak

Ridge

0

0

2 Miles

2 Kilometers

THE PUNCHBOWL AREA ELEVATION IN METERS

0 400 600 800 1,000 and Above
thereby gaining greater security for the vital Seoul-Ch’orwon railway. By late October UN operations had succeeded in securing most

of the commanding ground along the length of the front. The price

of these gains had not been cheap—approximately 40,000 UN casualties. Yet the enemy had suffered even more, and the determination

demonstrated by the United Nations Command in taking the offensive was probably a key factor in persuading the Communists to

return to the bargaining table.

Renewed Talks, Diminished Fighting: The Second Korean Winter,

November 1951–April 1952

On 25 October UN and Communist negotiators reconvened the

truce talks at a new location, a collection of tents in the tiny village of

P’anmunjom, six miles east of Kaesong. After some sparring, the

Communists dropped their demand for a return to the 38th Parallel and

accepted the UN position that the cease-fire line be drawn along the

current line of contact. In exchange, the UN bowed to Communist

demands that a truce line be agreed upon prior to the resolution of

other outstanding issues. To avoid the danger that the Communists

might stop negotiating once a line had been established, the

Americans insisted that both sides be permitted to continue fighting

until all outstanding questions had been resolved. The two sides also

agreed that the proposed armistice line would only be valid for thirty

days. Should a final truce not be arrived at within that time, then the

agreement over the line of demarcation would be invalid. Still, the

willingness of the United Nations to accept the current line of contact

as the final line of demarcation between the two Koreas represented a

significant windfall for the Communists, for it served as a fairly strong

indicator that the United Nations had no desire to press deeper into

North Korea. 

The termination of the UN offensive and the resumption of truce

talks in late October had a noticeably calming effect on the front. On

12 November Ridgway instructed Van Fleet to assume an “active

defense.” Thereafter, offensive operations were to be limited to those

actions necessary to strengthen UN lines. When the armistice negotiators formally embraced the line of demarcation accords on 27

November, Van Fleet went one step further by prohibiting his subordinates from initiating any offensive operations other than counterattacks to recapture ground lost to an enemy attack. The Communists

likewise refrained from undertaking major actions, and the resulting

lull gave the United Nations the opportunity to accomplish a major

change in battlefield lineup. 

13
Between December 1951 and February 1952 the United States

withdrew the 1st Cavalry and 24th Infantry Divisions from Korea and

replaced them with two National Guard formations, the 40th and 45th

Infantry Divisions. Ridgway had been reluctant to make the swap,

fearing that the newly trained divisions would not be as effective as

the two veteran units they were replacing. In fact, the UN commander

had recommended that the two Guard divisions be kept at their staging areas in Japan as a source of individual replacements for the divisions already in Korea. But Army Chief of Staff General J. Lawton

14

38°

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1 CMW

XX

ROK 1(+)

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47

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65

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64

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42

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NK I

XX

1(+)

XX

ROK

PLA

PLA

PLA

PLA

P’YONGYANG

Haeju

Chinnamp’o

Sariwon

Ongjin

Taedong R

Yesong R

Imjin R

YELLOW

SEA

SEOUL

Uijongb

C

Inch’on

Kaesong

Han R

P’anmunjom

Iro

Trian

THE FRONT LINES

31 October 1951

Eighth Army Front, 31 Oct

Eighth Army Front, 10 Jul

ELEVATIONS IN METERS

0

2010010 30 40

10 0 10 20 40

200 500 1000 AND ABOVE

KILOMETERS

MILES
Collins insisted that the National Guard divisions deploy to Korea

intact. Not to do so, Collins maintained, would trigger a rancorous

public debate over the Guard’s role and fuel allegations that the Army

did not trust its own mobilization training system. Fortunately the

changeover went smoothly, and soon the two new divisions—which

largely consisted of draftees led by a cadre of National Guardsmen—

were performing just as well as the Regular units they had replaced,

units that by this time in the war likewise contained large numbers of

replacements and draftees. 

15

38°

XX

203 68

XX

ROK 2

XX

ROK 11

XX

ROK 3

XXXX

26

XXXX

68(-)

XXXX

67

XXX

NK VI

XXX

NK II

XXX

NK III

XX

25(+)

XX

24(+)

XX

ROK 6

XX

ROK 8

XX

ROK 7(+)

K 9

XX

ROK CAP

XX

1 MAR(+)

PLA

PLA

PLA

PLA

Wonsan

P’yonggang

Yangyang

Kangnung

Samch’ok

SEA

O F

JAPAN

Ch’unch’on

Kosong

Kojo

Kumhwa

u

h’orwon

T

A

E

B

A

E

K

M

O

U

N

T

A I N

S

Han R

Kansong

HWACH’ON

RESERVOIR

Mundung-ni

Punchbowl

Kumsong

Yongmi n

gle
While the Army realigned its order of battle, the P’anmunjom

negotiators struggled to finalize the truce agreement in time to meet

the thirty-day deadline. When they failed in this, they agreed to extend

the deadline by an additional two weeks, but this deadline also came

and went without noticeable progress. By this point, however, winter

had fully set in, making a renewal of major operations problematic at

best. Raids and patrols continued, if for no other reason than to prevent inaction from dulling the troops’ combat edge, but overall the

level of combat was minimal. The decline in activity was accompanied

by a precipitous drop in UN casualties, from about 20,000 during the

month of October to under 3,000 per month between December 1951

and April 1952. All in all, the commanders on both sides seemed content to sit out the winter and let the negotiators do the heavy fighting.

And fight they did.

Although a number of issues separated UN and Communist

negotiators, the chief stumbling block to the arrangement of a final

armistice during the winter of 1951–1952 revolved around the

exchange of prisoners. At first glance, there appeared to be nothing

to argue about, since the Geneva Conventions of 1949, by which

both sides had pledged to abide, called for the immediate and complete exchange of all prisoners upon the conclusion of hostilities.

This seemingly straightforward principle, however, disturbed many

16

P’anmunjom truce tents (National Archives)
Americans. To begin with, UN prisoner-of-war (POW) camps held

over 40,000 South Koreans, many of whom had been impressed into

Communist service and who had no desire to be sent north upon the

conclusion of the war. Moreover, a considerable number of North

Korean and Chinese prisoners had also expressed a desire not to

return to their homelands. This was particularly true of the Chinese

POWs, some of whom were anti-Communists whom the Communists

had forcibly inducted into their army. Many Americans recoiled at

the notion of returning such men into the hands of their oppressors,

and for several months American policymakers wrestled with the

POW question. 

Acquiescing to a total exchange of prisoners as called for by the

Geneva Conventions would quickly settle the issue and pave the way

for a final agreement ending the hostilities. On the other hand, the

desire of enemy soldiers not to return to their homelands was clearly

a useful propaganda weapon for the West in the wider Cold War.

17

Winter in Korea (National Archives)
Establishing the right of prisoners to chose their own destinies might

also pay significant dividends in any future war with the

Communists, as many enemy soldiers might desert or surrender if

they knew that they would not be forced to return to their

Communist-controlled homelands afterward. But no one suffered

any delusion about how the Communists would react to the voluntary repatriation concept. The newly established governments of

North Korea and the People’s Republic of China were extremely sensitive to anything that even remotely challenged their legitimacy.

This was especially true of the Communist Chinese government in

Peking, which would undoubtedly recoil at the suggestion that some

of its former soldiers be turned over to its mortal enemy, the rival

Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan. Clearly then, any

attempt to assert voluntary repatriation would complicate the truce

negotiations and prolong the war. 

Ultimately, it was the moral aspect of the question which decided

President Harry S. Truman. In the name of allied amity, President

Truman had dutifully repatriated Soviet citizens who had fallen into

American hands after World War II. Much to his dismay, the Soviet

government had mistreated, imprisoned, or even killed many of the

returnees. Truman had no desire to repeat this heart-wrenching experience if he could avoid it. In a war that was being fought in the name of

national self-determination and human liberty, he found it unconscionable to forcibly return people to totalitarian societies.

Consequently, after much soul searching, Truman made voluntary

repatriation a central tenet of America’s negotiating position in

February 1952.

Truman’s decision met with cries of anger from the Communists,

who accused the United States of violating the Geneva accords,

despite the fact that they themselves routinely violated that treaty’s

most basic precepts regarding the treatment of prisoners. Undaunted,

the United Nations proceeded to lay the groundwork for allowing antiCommunist prisoners to avoid involuntary repatriation. To begin with,

it reclassified the more than 40,000 South Koreans being held in UN

compounds as “civilian internees” rather than prisoners of war, a categorization that would allow them to be eventually released in the

South. Next, the United Nations began to screen all of its prisoners to

identify those who wished to return to their homelands after the war

and those who did not. The screening process aggravated tensions

inside the POW camps, which were already the site of frequent altercations between pro- and anti-Communist prisoners. Guided by

Communist agents who had deliberately allowed themselves to be cap18
tured in order to infiltrate the camps, pro-Communist prisoners staged

a series of increasingly violent uprisings during the spring of 1952,

much to the embarrassment of UN officials. Nevertheless, the screenings continued, and in April 1952 UN officials revealed the results—

only 70,000 of the 170,000 civil and military prisoners then held by

the United Nations wished to return to North Korea and the People’s

Republic of China. 

The results of the initial survey stunned Communist and UN

officials alike. While the Communists were willing to accept the

reclassification of South Koreans who had served in their ranks as

civilian internees, the sheer number of POWs who purportedly

wished to avoid repatriation represented an affront that they dared

not ignore. The report thus drove the Communists to dig in their

heels even further on the repatriation question, and they refused to

accept anything short of a complete return of all of their nationals to

their control. Conversely, the survey also served to lock the United

Nations into its position. Having asserted the principle of voluntary

repatriation and demonstrated that a large number of individuals

wished to take advantage of it, any retreat would represent a major

political and moral defeat for the UN. With neither side willing to

compromise, the armistice talks became hopelessly deadlocked over

the POW question. 

19

Repatriation screening of Communist POWs, 1952 (National Archives)
20

To gain additional leverage on this issue, Communist authorities

instructed their agents in the POW camps to step up their disruptive

activities. Armed with a startling array of homemade weapons, proCommunist elements deftly employed intimidation and violence to

gain control of the interiors of many POW camps. Then, in early May,

Communist prisoners scored a stunning coup when they succeeded in

capturing Brig. Gen. Francis T. Dodd, the commandant of the UN’s

main POW camp on Koje-do. To achieve his release, American

authorities pledged to suspend additional repatriation screenings in a

poorly worded communique that seemed to substantiate Communist

allegations that the UN had heretofore been mistreating prisoners. The

episode humiliated the United Nations Command and handed

Communist negotiators and propagandists alike a new weapon that

they wielded with great zeal, both within the negotiating tent and on

the larger stage of world public opinion. 

A Return to War: The Summer/Fall Campaigns, May–November 1952

As positions at the negotiating table hardened, spring thaws offered

the prospect for renewed military operations. Neither side, however,

showed much enthusiasm for such undertakings. Since the tempo of the

war had first begun to ebb after the initiation of truce talks in July 1951,

both sides had expended enormous amounts of effort to solidify their

frontline positions. The United Nations’ main line consisted of a nearly

unbroken line of bunkers, trenches, and artillery emplacements that

stretched for over one hundred fifty miles from one coast of Korea to

the other. Communist defenses were even more impressive. Because of

their overall inferiority in firepower, the Chinese and North Koreans

had taken extraordinary efforts to harden their positions. They burrowed deep into the sides of mountains, creating intricate warrens of

tunnels and caves capable of housing entire battalions of infantry.

Communist bunkers were often more solidly built than UN emplacements and were usually impervious to anything but a direct hit by bomb

or shell. They were also generally better sited than UN bunkers and better concealed to avoid the prying eyes of hostile aviators, something

UN soldiers did not have to worry about. Finally, the Communists built

in greater depth than their adversaries, not just below ground, but on

top of it, as they typically extended their fortifications up to twenty

miles behind their front line. These emplacements were manned by

over 900,000 men, approximately 200,000 more soldiers than the

United Nations had under arms in Korea. Over the winter the

Communists had also more than doubled the number of artillery pieces

they had on the front lines, while the static nature of the war had like-
wise permitted them to improve their overall supply situation, notwithstanding the best efforts of UN aviators to interdict Communist supply

lines. Thus, by the spring of 1952 the UN faced a well-trained, battlehardened, robust opponent who could not be easily defeated. 

Since both sides had already indicated their willingness to settle

the conflict roughly along the current front lines, neither side had any

incentive to risk a major offensive against the other. This was especially true for the UN commanders, who unlike their totalitarian adversaries always had to keep public opinion foremost in their minds. Too

many friendly casualties could undermine support for the war at home

and force the United Nations to acquiesce to Communist demands at

the negotiating table. Consequently, General Mark W. Clark, who

replaced General Ridgway as overall UN commander in mid-1952,

kept UN offensive operations to a minimum to avoid unnecessary losses. The Communists, for whom human casualties were of less consequence, likewise eschewed the big offensive in the belief that they

could just as easily erode the UN’s will to continue the struggle

through the daily grind of trench warfare. Raids, patrols, bombardments, and limited objective attacks thus remained the order of the

day, as both sides contented themselves with making light jabs at their

adversary rather than attempting to land a knockout blow.

The absence of grand offensives and sweeping movements

notwithstanding, service at the front was just as dangerous in 1952 as

it had been during the more fluid stages of the war. By June

Communist guns were hurling over 6,800 shells a day at UN positions.

During particularly hotly contested actions, Communist gunners occasionally fired as many as 24,000 rounds a day. UN artillerists repaid

the compliment five-, ten-, and sometimes even twenty-fold, and still

not a day went by when Communist and UN soldiers did not clash

somewhere along the front line. 

One of the most common missions performed by UN infantrymen

was the small raid for the purpose of capturing enemy prisoners for

interrogation. These operations were usually launched at night and

were extremely dangerous—indeed, relatively few succeeded in capturing any prisoners. At this level, the war was a very personal affair—

it was man against man, rifle against grenade, fist against knife. Smallunit fights required a great deal of courage, and sometimes the bravest

men were those who did not carry a rifle at all—the medics. One such

man was Sgt. David B. Bleak, a medical aidman attached to the 40th

Infantry Division’s 223d Infantry.

On 14 June 1952, Sergeant Bleak volunteered to accompany a

patrol that was going out to capture enemy prisoners from a neighbor21
ing hill. As the patrol approached its objective the enemy detected it

and laid down an intense stream of automatic weapons and small-arms

fire. After attending to several soldiers cut down in the initial barrage,

Sergeant Bleak resumed advancing up the hill with the rest of the

patrol. As he neared the crest, he came under fire from a small group

of entrenched enemy soldiers. Without hesitation, he leapt into the

trench and charged his assailants, killing two with his bare hands and a

third with his trench knife. As he emerged from the emplacement, he

saw a concussion grenade fall in front of a comrade and used his body

to shield the man from the blast. He then proceeded to administer to

the wounded, even after being struck by an enemy bullet. When the

order came to pull back, Sergeant Bleak ignored his wound and picked

up an incapacitated companion. As he moved down the hill with his

heavy burden, two enemy soldiers bore down on him with fixed bayonets. Undaunted, Bleak grabbed his two assailants and smacked their

heads together before resuming his way back down the mountain carrying his wounded comrade.

Sergeant Bleak’s actions were so distinctive that June day that they

won him one of the 131 Medals of Honor awarded during the Korean

War. Yet a day did not go by in which some American soldier did not

risk his life for his comrades on some nameless Korean hillside. This

was particularly true for those soldiers assigned to the outpost line—a

string of strongpoints several thousand yards to the front of the UN’s

main battle positions. The typical outpost consisted of a number of

bunkers and interconnecting trenches ringed with barbed wire and

mines perched precariously on the top of a barren, rocky hill. As the

UN’s most forward positions, the outposts acted as patrol bases and

early warning stations. They also served as fortified outworks that controlled key terrain features overlooking UN lines. As such, they represented the UN’s first line of defense and were accorded great importance by UN and Communist commanders alike. Not surprisingly, the

outposts were the scenes of some of the most vicious fighting of the

war. While most of these actions were on a small scale, some of the

biggest battles of 1952 revolved around efforts either to establish,

defend, or retake these outposts. 

Operation COUNTER provides one example of some of the larger

outpost battles. During COUNTER the 45th Infantry Division sought to

establish twelve new outposts on high ground overlooking the division’s main battle line outside of Ch’orwon. The division easily seized

eleven of its twelve objectives during a night assault on 6 June, with

the twelfth falling into American hands six days later during a secondphase attack. But if capturing the new outposts had been relatively

22
easy, holding them would not be. The Chinese reacted violently to the

American initiative, and by the end of June the 45th Division had

repulsed more than twenty Communist counterattacks on the newly

established positions. Still the enemy came, and in mid-July his persistence paid off when Chinese troops succeeded in pushing elements of

the 2d Infantry Division off one of these outposts—a key mountain

nine miles west of Ch’orwon known as Old Baldy. Two companies

from the 23d Infantry recaptured the hill after bitter hand-to-hand

fighting on 1 August, but in mid-September the enemy again seized

the hill, only to lose it several days later to a determined counterattack

made by the 38th Infantry and a platoon of tanks. 

The savage, seesaw struggle atop Old Baldy was repeated in one

way or another on countless mountain peaks and ridges during 1952,

as the two sides struggled to gain ascendancy over the rugged noman’s-land that separated their respective battle lines. The heavy casualties incurred in these bitter outpost battles discouraged General

Clark from authorizing any new offensives after Operation COUNTER.

This defensive-mindedness rankled General Van Fleet, who believed

that the high casualties the United Nations was experiencing were due

in part to the UN’s allowing the enemy to launch attacks when and

where he wished. Van Fleet therefore pressed Clark to authorize additional limited offensives that would allow UN forces to regain the initiative from the enemy and compel him to fight on American terms. 

One potential candidate for such an operation was Triangle Hill, a

mountain three miles north of Kumhwa. The United Nations was suffering heavy casualties in the area on account of the proximity of the

opposing battle lines, which in some cases lay only 200 yards apart.

Seizing Triangle Hill and its neighbor—Sniper Ridge—would force

the enemy to fall back over 1,200 yards to the next viable defensive

position, thereby strengthening UN dominance over the sector and

reducing friendly casualties. Finally, an offensive would also serve a

political purpose. On 8 October UN negotiators had walked out of the

armistice talks out of frustration over being unable to reach an accommodation with the enemy on the prisoner issue. With the talks now

officially recessed and no hope in sight for a resolution of the conflict,

a demonstration of UN resolve seemed in order. Van Fleet was confident that, given sufficient support, two infantry battalions would be

able to capture the Triangle Hill complex in just five days with about

200 casualties. Swayed by Van Fleet’s arguments, Clark agreed to

authorize the attack.

On 14 October, 280 artillery pieces and over 200 fighter-bomber

sorties began pummeling Triangle Hill. Unfortunately, Communist

23
Soldiers of Battery C, 936th Field Artillery Battalion, fire at 

Communist positions near Ch’orwon; below, artillery may 

have dominated the battlefield, but ultimately it was infantry that 

captured and held ground. Here, Company F, 9th Infantry, advances 

in central Korea. (National Archives)
25

defenses proved tougher than expected, and reinforcements had to be

funneled in—first one battalion, then another, and another. When the

smoke finally cleared several weeks later, two UN infantry divisions

(the U.S. 7th and the ROK 2d) had suffered over 9,000 casualties in

an ultimately futile attempt to capture Triangle Hill. Estimates of

Chinese casualties exceeded 19,000 men, but the Communists had

the manpower for such fights and did not flinch from flinging men

into the breach to hold key terrain. The United Nations did not have

such resources.

The Third Korean Winter, December 1952–April 1953

By the time the battles for Triangle Hill and Sniper Ridge had

wound down in mid-November, both sides had begun the now familiar

pattern of settling down for yet another winter in Korea. As temperatures dropped so too did the pace of combat. Still, shelling, sniping,

and raiding remained habitual features of life at the front, as did patrol

and guard duty, so that even the quietest of days usually posed some

peril. For most frontline soldiers, home was a “hootchie,” the name

soldiers gave to the log and earth bunkers that were the mainstay of

UN defenses in Korea. Built for the most part into the sides of hills,

the typical hootchie housed from two to seven men. Each bunker was

usually equipped with a single automatic weapon which could be fired

at the enemy through above-ground firing ports. Inside, candles and

lamps shed their pale light on the straw-matted floors and pinupbedecked walls of the cramped, five-by-eight-foot areas that comprised

a hootchie’s living quarters. Oil, charcoal, or wood stoves provided

heat, bunk beds made of logs and telephone wire offered respite, and

boxes of extra ammunition and hand grenades gave comfort to the

men for whom these humble abodes were home. However Spartan, the

hootchie provided welcome shelter from the daily storms of bomb,

bullet, rain, and snow that raged outside.

Keeping up morale is difficult in any combat situation, but when

the fighting devolves into a prolonged stalemate, it is particularly hard

to maintain. Consequently, the Army developed an extensive system of

personnel and unit rotations to combat soldier burnout and fatigue.

Rotation began in a modest way at the small-unit level, where many

companies established warm-up bunkers just behind the front lines.

Every three or four days a soldier could expect a short respite of a few

hours’ duration back at the warm-up bunker. There he would be able to

spend his time as he saw fit, reading, writing letters, washing clothes, or

getting a haircut. When operations were not pressing, many companies

also arranged to send a dozen or so men at a time somewhat farther to
A soldier from the 180th Infantry mans a machine gun from inside a 

bunker; below, living quarters inside a “hootchie.” (National Archives)
the rear for a 24-hour rest period. The ultimate rest and recuperation (R

and R) program, however, was a five-day holiday in Japan that Eighth

Army tried to arrange for every soldier on an annual basis. 

Eighth Army complemented these individual R and R activities

with an extensive unit rotation program. Companies regularly rotated

their constituent platoons between frontline and reserve duty.

Similarly, battalions rotated their companies, regiments rotated their

battalions, divisions rotated their regiments, and corps rotated their

divisions, all to ensure that combat units periodically had a chance to

rest, recoup, retrain, and absorb replacements. Last but not least, the

Army maintained a massive individual replacement program in an

effort to equalize as much as possible the burdens of military service

during a limited war. 

In September 1951 the Army had introduced a point system that

tried to take into account the nature of individual service when determining eligibility for rotation home to the United States. According to

this system, a soldier earned four points for every month he served in

close combat, two points per month for rear-echelon duty in Korea,

and one point for duty elsewhere in the Far East. Later, an additional

category—divisional reserve status—was established at a rate of three

points per month. The Army initially stated that enlisted men needed

to earn forty-three points to be eligible for rotation back to the States,

while officers required fifty-five points. In June 1952 the Army

reduced these requirements to thirty-six points for enlisted men and

thirty-seven points for officers. Earning the required number of points

did not guarantee instant rotation; it only meant that the soldier in

question was eligible to go home. Nevertheless, most soldiers did

return home shortly after they met the requirement. 

The point system was a marvelous palliative to flagging spirits, as

it gave every soldier a definite goal in an otherwise indefinite and

seemingly goalless war. Every man knew that typical frontline duty

would enable him to return home after about a year of service in

Korea. The system also helped boost the spirits of loved ones back

home. This was of some consequence in helping to maintain public

support for what was an increasingly unpopular war. Yet for all of its

psychological and political benefits, the program was not without its

costs. The constant turnover generated by the policy—approximately

20,000 to 30,000 men per month—was terribly inefficient from the

vantage point of manpower administration and created tremendous

strains on the Army’s personnel and training systems. The program

also hurt military proficiency by increasing personnel turbulence and

by producing a continuous drain on skilled manpower. No sooner had

27
a soldier become fully acclimatized to the physical, mental, and technical demands of Korean combat than he was rotated home, only to be

replaced by a green recruit who lacked these skills. This was true not

only of the enlisted men, who were rushed to the front with little or no

field training, but of the officers as well. Indeed, by the fall of 1952

most junior officers with World War II combat experience had been

rotated home and replaced by recent Reserve Officers’ Training Corps

graduates who had neither command nor combat experience. In a sinister twist, the system also reduced the effectiveness of many veteran

soldiers, who became progressively more cautious and unreliable in

combat as their eligibility for rotation neared. All of this meant that

combat proficiency tended to stagnate in American units during the

course of the war. This contrasted sharply with those Communist units

that had avoided heavy casualties and managed to keep their morale

intact. In these units battlefield acumen steadily increased as the war

progressed thanks to the Communists’ rather Draconian personnel

policies. In the Red Army, victory or death were the only ways home.

The disparity in combat experience between the typical American

and Communist combat unit was just one factor that contributed to the

Eighth Army’s heavy reliance on air and artillery support. Political

sensitivity at home to the war’s mounting body count, the stagnant,

siege-like nature of the war, and a natural desire on the part of commanders to spare the lives of their men also contributed to the United

Nations Command’s preference for expending metal rather than blood.

The Communists understood the terrible power of America’s industrial

might and attempted to compensate for it in a variety of ways. They

steadily increased the size of their own artillery park until it exceeded

that of the UN’s, though they never managed to match the technical

proficiency and ammunition reserves enjoyed by American artillerists.

They dug deep, moved at night, and became masters of the arts of

infiltration, deception, and surprise, all to minimize their vulnerability

to the awesome destructive power wielded by the UN’s air, land, and

naval forces. Yet when push came to shove, the Communists also had

the political will, the authoritarian control, and the manpower reserves

to indulge in human wave attacks. American industrial might could

and did obliterate many such attacks, but ultimately it was the infantry

who held ground, and, when the Communists wanted a piece of terrain

badly enough, they generally had the human wherewithal to take it. 

The Final Summer, May–July 1953

The year 1953 found 768,000 UN soldiers facing over one million

Communist troops along battle lines that had not materially changed

28
for nearly two years. Spring thaws brought the customary increase in

military activity, as Communist soldiers emerged from their winter

dens to probe UN outposts. But the new year also brought with it some

fresh developments on the political and diplomatic fronts—developments that would dramatically alter the annual rites of spring at the

battlefront. 

In January 1953 Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeded Harry S.

Truman as President of the United States. Eisenhower’s ascension to

the presidency created an air of uncertainty among Communist leaders. Though he had campaigned on a platform promising to end the

war, some Communists feared that Eisenhower, a former five-star general whose Republican Party contained some rabidly hawkish elements, might seek to end the war by winning it. 

Communist uncertainty about the future increased in March, when

one of North Korea’s preeminent patrons, Soviet leader Joseph V.

Stalin, died. Stalin’s death triggered a succession struggle inside the

Soviet Union. Preoccupied with their own political affairs, Kremlin

leaders sought to minimize Soviet involvement in potentially destabilizing activities in the outside world. Chief among these was the war in

Korea which, should it escalate, might lead to a direct conflict with the

United States—a conflict which the inward-looking Soviets desperately

wanted to avoid. Consequently, shortly after Stalin’s death, Soviet officials began to signal a new interest in seeing the Korean conflict put to

rest. These sentiments were echoed by Mao, who likewise found that

the conflict in Korea was detracting from his ability to address pressing

domestic issues inside the newly formed People’s Republic of China.

The convergence of these events—the death of Stalin, the ascension of Eisenhower, and the growing desire on the part of all sides to

find a way out of a seemingly unending and unprofitable conflict—created an environment conducive to a settlement of the Korean imbroglio.

On 26 April UN and Communist negotiators returned to the truce tent

at P’anmunjom after a six-month hiatus. This time Communist negotiators expressed a willingness to allow prisoners of war to decide whether

or not they wanted to return to their homelands. This key concession

opened the door to fruitful negotiations. As a goodwill measure, both

sides quickly agreed to an immediate exchange of sick and wounded

prisoners. The exchange (dubbed Operation LITTLE SWITCH) resulted in

the repatriation of 684 UN and 6,670 Communist personnel. The two

parties then sat down to the laborious task of hammering out all of the

many technical details pertaining to the actual implementation of a

cease-fire and a final, full exchange of prisoners. Even at this late date,

American negotiators found that their Communist counterparts were

29
determined to seek every possible advantage, and the talks dragged on,

week after week, month after month. 

In June South Korean President Syngman Rhee, who opposed any

resolution of the conflict that left North Korea in Communist hands,

jarred negotiators on both sides when he unilaterally released about

25,000 North Korean prisoners who had previously voiced a desire to

remain in South Korea after the war. The release, which Rhee thinly

disguised as a prison “breakout,” angered American and Communist

negotiators alike and temporarily disrupted the negotiations. Yet the

act also helped the North Korean government save face, for by allowing many anti-Communist North Koreans to “escape,” South Korea

spared the North Korean government some of the embarrassment of

having to admit that a large number of its captured soldiers did not

want to return home. Thus, after some compulsory sputtering, the

Communists chose to remain at the negotiating table, and the talks

proceeded despite Rhee’s attempts at disruption. 

One might have expected that the Communists’ newfound interest

in seeking a cessation of hostilities would have translated to inaction

on the battlefield, especially as prospects for a final settlement became

progressively more imminent. Unfortunately, such was not the case.

Rather, the Communists chose to increase the tempo of the war. In part

the heightened activity reflected the natural desire of Communist generals to secure the best possible ground before the armistice went into

effect. But the Communist offensives of the spring and summer of

1953 also served a broader political purpose. Ever mindful of the

wider propaganda aspects of the struggle between East and West, the

Communists were determined to end the war on a positive note. A

final offensive that seized additional territory would give the

Communists the opportunity to portray themselves as victors whose

martial prowess had finally compelled the United Nations to sue for

peace. Such claims would also allow Communist propagandists to

paper over some of the more bitter pills the Communists would have to

swallow in the upcoming accords. 

Communist military activity had begun in early March with company-size probes of various UN frontline positions. By mid-month the

Chinese had escalated to battalion-size attacks. After a failed attempt

to capture a UN hill outpost nicknamed “Little Gibraltar,” the Chinese

turned their gaze onto one of the central battlefields of the previous

year—Old Baldy. On the evening of 23 March a Chinese battalion

supported by mortar and artillery fire overran a Colombian company

on Old Baldy. Repeated efforts by the 7th Infantry Division to regain

the mountain failed to dislodge the Chinese, who were determined to

30
cling to the pulverized rock regardless of the cost. Although the UN

had killed or wounded two to three Chinese for every UN soldier lost

on Old Baldy, General Maxwell D. Taylor, who had recently replaced

Van Fleet as Eighth Army commander, decided that the mountain was

not worth additional UN lives, and on 30 March he suspended UN

efforts to retake the hill. 

April brought a lull in Communist activities, but in May the front

began to heat up as company and battalion attacks gave way to regimental-size assaults. Then in June, as the P’anmunjom negotiators sat

down to draw up a final cease-fire line, the enemy launched a major,

three-division offensive against the ROK II Corps in the vicinity of

Kumsong. The Chinese succeeded in pushing the South Koreans back

about three miles before the front restabilized, a significant advance

after two years of stagnant trench warfare. Elsewhere UN forces large31

7th Infantry Division trenches, July 1953 (National Archives)
ly succeeded in repulsing more limited Communist attacks, and by the

end of June the intensity of the fighting had once again subsided. The

Communists, however, were by no means done. After consolidating

their gains and bringing up additional supplies and reinforcements, the

Communists launched what was to be their biggest offensive operation

since the spring of 1951. 

The offensive began on 6 July. After hammering South Korean

lines south of the Iron Triangle, the Chinese turned their attention to

Pork Chop Hill, a company-size 7th Division outpost that over the past

32

38°

P’YONGYANG

Haeju

Chinnamp’o

Sariwon

Ongjin

Taedong R

Yesong R

Imjin R

YELLOW

SEA

SEOUL

Uijongb

C

Inch’on

Kaesong

Han R

P’anmunjom

Iro

Tria

LINE OF DEMARCATION

27 July 1953

Demarcation Line

Eighth Army Front, 10 Jul 51

ELEVATIONS IN METERS

0

2010010 30 40

10 0 10 20 40

200 500 1000 AND ABOVE

KILOMETERS

MILES
33

year had seen about as much fighting as its neighboring peak, Old

Baldy. Following a ferocious artillery and mortar barrage, wave after

wave of Chinese infantrymen stormed up Pork Chop Hill. Backed by

some heavy artillery fire of their own, the beleaguered defenders

valiantly held on. Both sides funneled in reinforcements, with the

Chinese committing a new battalion for every fresh company the

Americans sent in. By 11 July General Taylor reluctantly decided to

abandon Pork Chop Hill. As had been the case on Old Baldy, Taylor

could not justify risking more lives for a hill that was of minimal

38°

Wonsan

P’yonggang

Yangyang

Kangnung

Samch’ok

SEA

O F

JAPAN

Ch’unch’on

Kosong

Kojo

Kumhwa

u

h’orwon

T

A

E

B

A

E

K

M

O

U

N

T

A I N

S

Han R

Kansong

HWACH’ON

RESERVOIR

Mundung-ni

Punchbowl

Kumsong

Yongmi n

gle
strategic significance, especially given the fact that an armistice was

just around the corner. 

Communist commanders operated under a different calculus—one

that held potentially unnecessary losses of life to no account. Two days

after Taylor withdrew from Pork Chop Hill, six Chinese divisions

slammed into UN lines south of Kumsong. The ROK II Corps once

again bore the brunt of the assault, falling back in confusion for eight

miles before regrouping along the banks of the Kumsong River. UN

counterattacks regained some of this lost ground, but there seemed little point in pressing the issue. On 20 July the negotiators reached an

armistice agreement which they signed seven days later in a ceremony

at P’anmunjom. At 2200 on 27 July 1953, an eery silence fell across

the front. The Korean War was over. 

Analysis

The last two months of the war had been some of the most horrific

of the entire conflict. In less than sixty days Communist artillery had

fired over 700,000 rounds at UN positions, while UN artillery had

repaid the favor nearly sevenfold, sending over 4.7 million shells back

at their tormentors. Approximately 100,000 Communist and nearly

53,000 UN soldiers were killed, captured, or wounded during those

final two months of combat. For their trouble the Communists had

gained a few miles of mountainous terrain and some grist for their

propaganda mills, but these gains could not mask the speciousness of

Communist claims that they had won the war. 

In truth, the Korean War had been rather inconclusive. Under the

leadership of the United States, the United Nations had successfully

defended the sovereignty of a free and democratically elected government from totalitarianism while simultaneously demonstrating the

ability of the international community to stand up effectively against

aggression. On the other hand, UN action had been possible only

because the Soviet Union had chosen to walk out of the UN Security

Council in 1950, a costly miscalculation that the Soviets were unlikely

to repeat in the future. Nor had the UN been able to obtain its optimistic goal of liberating North Korea. 

From the Communist viewpoint, the war likewise brought mixed

results. Not only had the North Koreans failed to conquer the South,

but they had actually suffered a net loss of 1,500 square miles of territory as the price of their aggression. On the other hand, the

Communists had successfully rebuffed UN attempts to liberate the

North, while the conflict had propelled the young People’s Republic of

34
China to a place of prominence on the world stage. Finally, for good or

ill, the war had calcified Cold War animosities and fueled a wider

geopolitical confrontation between East and West that would dominate

world affairs for the next forty years. Thus the Korean conflict would

have great repercussions, despite the fact that little territory changed

hands as a result of it. 

Perhaps the greatest repercussions of the Korean conflict, however, were the effects the war had on the human beings it touched—the

soldiers it maimed, the civilians it displaced, and the families around

the world who lost their sons and brothers, fathers and lovers to

bomb, bullet, and shell. For the Korean War was as bloody as it was

inconclusive. United Nations forces suffered over 559,000 casualties

during the war, including approximately 94,000 dead. America’s

share of this bill totaled 36,516 dead and 103,284 wounded. The

enemy had taken prisoner 7,245 Americans during the war. The UN

35

Lt. Gen. William K. Harrison, Jr., U.S. Army, and Lt. Gen. Nam Il, 

North Korean People’s Army, sign the armistice agreement on 

27 July 1953. (National Archives)
estimated that Communist military casualties exceeded two million

dead, wounded, and prisoners. Civilian losses were even more

appalling—approximately one million South Korean and up to two

million North Korean civilians either died, disappeared, or were

injured during the course of the war, while millions more became

refugees.

While territorial losses and disproportionate casualties belied

Communist claims of victory, no facet of the war exposed the bankruptcy of communism more clearly than the prisoner issue. In accordance with the final armistice agreement, both sides directly

exchanged all prisoners who desired to return to their homelands. All

told, 75,823 Communist and 12,773 UN personnel (including 3,597

Americans) returned home from captivity under this arrangement

(Operation BIG SWITCH). Prisoners who had expressed a desire not to

be repatriated were sent to a temporary camp at P’anmunjom. There

government representatives were allowed to talk with their respective

nationals under the impartial supervision of a five-member Neutral

Nations Repatriation Commission. The interviews served to ensure

that soldiers had not been coerced into refusing repatriation. They also

gave the governments involved the opportunity to try and persuade

their nationals to return home. When the interviews were over, each

man was free to chose whether or not he wanted to return home. The

numbers were revealing. Of the 359 UN personnel sent to the camp,

ten decided to come home, two decided to go to neutral third countries, and the remainder—347—decided to live among the

Communists. Included among these were twenty-one Americans who

chose to remain with their captors. In contrast, 22,604 Communist soldiers initially chose not to be repatriated. After being processed by the

Repatriation Commission, 628 relented and returned home. The rest—

over 21,000 Chinese and North Koreans—chose to remain in the nonCommunist world, with the Koreans going to South Korea and the

Chinese to Nationalist-controlled Taiwan. When added to the roughly

25,000 North Koreans Rhee had freed in June, this meant that over

46,000 Communist soldiers had refused repatriation. No better testimony as to the merits of life under communism existed than this.

The United States had taken a noble stand in asserting that prisoners had a right not to return to societies they found objectionable,

but the price of establishing this principle had been high. After the

P’anmunjom negotiators had agreed to use the line of contact as a

cease-fire line in November 1951, the repatriation question had been

the only substantial issue over which the two sides remained at loggerheads. By insisting on voluntary repatriation—a right that had

36
heretofore not existed in international law—the United States had

adopted a course that had prolonged the war by fifteen months, during which 125,000 United Nations and over 250,000 Communist soldiers had become casualties. The 46,000 Chinese and North Koreans

who escaped communism as a result of American opposition to

forcible repatriation had truly been given a precious, if dearly

bought, gift.

Yet the nonrepatriates were not the only ones to have benefited

from America’s willingness to fight for principles in which it believed.

In Korea, the real struggle had never been about the control of this hill

or that hill. Rather, it had been about the principles of national selfdetermination and of freedom from oppression. By successfully

defending the fledgling Republic of Korea, the American GI, together

with his comrades in arms from South Korea and eighteen other

nations, had secured the freedom of millions of South Korean civilians

from Communist oppression. 

This was a great achievement, but it was not a job that, once done,

could stand by itself. For while the armistice of 27 July 1953 ended the

fighting in Korea, it had not truly ended the war. The armistice was

just that—a temporary cease-fire—and not a treaty of peace. It reflected the realization by all parties that neither side had either the will or

the means to compel the other to bow to its political agenda. Hence the

warring parties had agreed to disagree—to stop the shooting and to

transfer the war from the battlefield to the diplomatic field. There the

conflict has remained, despite sporadic incidents and border clashes,

for half a century. 

The inability of the two sides to resolve their differences has

meant that the two Koreas and their allies have had to remain on a

war footing along the inter-Korean border ever since. Fifty years

after the North Korean invasion, Communist and United Nations soldiers still glare at each other across the demilitarized zone established in July 1953. Together with the South Koreans, U.S. Army

troops continue to make up the bulk of the UN contingent in Korea.

The burdens of protecting South Korea from the threat of renewed

Communist aggression over the past half-century have been great for

the United States. Billions of dollars have been spent and some additional lives have been lost, the latter as a result of sporadic

Communist violations of the cease-fire. Yet by standing unswervingly behind its commitments, the United States in general—and the

millions of men and women of the United States armed forces who

have served their country in Korea since 1953 in particular—has

guaranteed that the sacrifices made by men like Private Pililaau,

37
Sergeant Bleak, and thousands of other American fighting men during the Korean War were not made in vain. 

38

Cover: A 155-mm. howitzer of Battery B, 75th Field Artillery Battalion, 

bombards Communist positions near Kumhwa. (National Archives)
Further Readings

Alexander, Bevin. Korea: The First War We Lost. New York:

Hippocrene, 1986.

Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–53. New

York: Doubleday, 1987.

Brune, Lester H., ed. The Korean War: Handbook of the Literature and

Research. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Edwards, Paul M., comp. The Korean War: An Annotated

Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.

Fehrenbach, T. R. This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness. New

York: Macmillan, 1963.

Gugeler, Russell A. Combat Actions in Korea. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Army Center of Military History, 1970.

Hastings, Max. The Korean War. New York: Simon and Schuster,

1987.

Hermes, Walter G. Truce Tent and Fighting Front. United States Army

in the Korean War. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of

Military History, 1988.

Hinshaw, Arned. Heartbreak Ridge: Korea, 1951. New York: Praeger,

1989.

Marshall, S. L. A. Pork Chop Hill. New York: Permabooks, 1959.

Rees, David. Korea: The Limited War. New York: St. Martin’s Press,

1964.

Stueck, William. The Korean War: An International History.

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Westover, John G. Combat Support in Korea. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Army Center of Military History, 1987.

39
CMH Pub 19–10

Cover: A 155-mm. howitzer of Battery B, 75th Field Artillery Battalion, 

bombards Communist positions near Kumhwa. (National Archives)

PIN : 078427–000