The Second Battle of Wolmi

More than 140,000 Americans were killed or wounded fighting Communists in Korea, and the U.S. is still spending $250 million a year to clear up the wreckage of war. Yet last week, with bayonets and tear gas, U.S. troops were fighting again in Korea—this time against their allies, the South Koreans.

At Pusan, where the U.S. put division after division ashore to save Korea in 1950, Korean mobs stormed U.S. barracks. Into Kunsan air base, where U.S. warplanes took off to bomb South Korea's invaders, Koreans were hurling bombs of their own. It was a strange and tragic conflict, for the Americans were fighting to protect their enemies: the Communist Poles and Czechs of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission.

While the G.I.s were stoned in their defense, the Communists last week sat in safety behind U.S. machine guns, smoking American cigarettes, leafing through American magazines, drinking American beer. With their Swiss and Swedish colleagues, they came to Korea in 1953, ostensibly to ensure that neither side increased its military strength after the armistice signed at Panmunjom. That truce, which South Korea did not sign, was supposed to last 90 days, until a conference met to work out a treaty. It is now 23 months later, and President Syngman Rhee has run out of patience.

His complaint: truce inspection is a farce, for only the U.N. observes it. Not a Sabre jet leaves Korea, not a howitzer is junked or a Patton tank replaced on the U.N. side, without its being reported to the NNSC and thence, via the Czechs and the Poles, to Pyongyang, Peking and Moscow. U.S. soldier replacements disembarking in Korea are greeted by Communist officers, who click them in with hand counters as they march off their Army transports. Yet on the North Korean side of the truce line, an immense and illegal buildup has gone on unchecked.

On the Other Side. Since the armistice, U.S. intelligence estimates that the Communists have increased artillery firepower by 30%, laid out 40 military airfields and moved in more than 400 aircraft, including 150 MIG jets. Last year, the Swiss and Swedes reported that truce inspection in North Korea was "completely illusory." The U.S. called for its immediate abolition on the grounds that "obstructionist tactics on the Communist side have made [its work] impossible." Washington even promised Rhee that the U.S. would see to it that NNSC left Korea shortly. It is still there.

At long length Syngman Rhee decided to take things into his own hands. He didn't like the idea of the U.S. sitting down peaceful-like with the Chinese Reds at Geneva. Rhee denounced the Poles and Czechs on the NNSC as "Communist spies." His newspapers launched a systematic propaganda barrage designed to convince his people that another attack on South Korea was imminent. At the same time, Rhee's national police made arrangements to levy food, drink and banquet quotas on South Korean shopkeepers, for the use of the students and unemployed whom Rhee can always rely on to do his rioting for him. Then President Rhee put out two ultimatums. The first was to the North Koreans: get out of the Kaesong enclave, the area south of the 38th Parallel on Korea's west coast which was ceded to the Communists.