KOREA: Sin of Omission

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For two labyrinthine years, the U.N. held out at Panmunjom for the right of prisoners of war to refuse to go back behind the Iron Curtain. That question finally became the central issue of the truce talks. The truce agreement conceded the U.N. view: it specifically ruled that no P.W. should be forced to return home.

To get this agreement, however, the U.N. did agree that P.W.s should spend 90 days in neutral custody while representatives of their governments "explained" their positions. Furthermore, the U.N. omitted to negotiate the details of this procedure. That was left to the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, comprising Red Poland and Czechoslovakia, neutral Sweden and Switzerland, and India, the chairman. Last week the U.N. was shocked to learn that its sin of omission might imperil the basic principle of non-repatriation, for which, in effect, the closing months of the war had been fought.

The Rules. First, the Neutral Commission sent a letter to the 14,800 Chinese and the 7,800 North Korean prisoners at Indian Village in Korea's demilitarized zone. "We have come here," the commission said, "to protect you from any form of coercion ... to assure you of your freedom to exercise your right to be repatriated." The P.W.s must listen "absolutely, by necessity," to the explainers, who would "inform you of your peaceful life and complete freedom upon your returning home."

This letter indicated that the commission and its Indian chairman, Lieut. General K. S. Thimayya, had accepted the Communist argument that "certain interested parties," and not the love of freedom, were keeping the prisoners on this side of the Iron Curtain. At once, the U.N. protested that the letter's "wording, method of presentation and the strong implications have been slanted towards unduly 'influencing prisoners of war...to repatriation, rather than making a free, independent choice."

Two days later, the commission issued the long-awaited ground rules for the go-day explanations. After one quick look at them, one U.N. officer gasped: "They've bought just about everything the Communists wanted." The commission ruled that each P.W. must undergo individual explanation, eight hours a day, six days a week, before an audience "not exceeding 35" officials of his own and neutral countries. After the explanations, P.W.s would be relocated in different compounds, so that their waiting friends would not know whether they had decided to go home, or what had happened to them. Again the U.N. protested.

The Riots. Confusion and uncertainty lay heavily upon the P.W.s in Indian Village. The fact was that the U.N., despite many promises to watch over them, no longer had control over what happened to them; it had given up its control in the armistice. While loudspeakers blared Indian marches and love songs ("Neutral music," the Indians called it), Chinese and North Korean P.W.s banged tin cans and shouted, "We will face death rather than the Red explainers." Several other prisoners, possibly left behind as Communist plants, cried out that they were being intimidated by Nationalist Chinese (see cut) and were handed over to Red custody. The 5,600 Indian guards, appalled and bewildered by the commotion, stared blankly through the barbed wire or stayed in their quarters.