KOREA: 22,000 to 22

On the same weird, wild note with which they had begun ten weeks ago, the P.W. explanations in the Korean neutral zone ended last week. On that last day, U.N. explainers broadcast a final appeal to the 22 Americans, one Briton and 77 pro-Red South Koreans who refused to go home and refused to be interviewed. The broadcast words were wasted breath. The prisoners refused to listen, linked arms for a Korean folk dance, banged cymbals, tried to drown out the loudspeakers with Communist songs. When the broadcast appeal was over, the U.N. explainers waited around for half an hour, then abandoned the prisoners to the consequences of their choice.

The handful of Americans had got a disproportionate amount of headline space of late, almost enough to lend a spurious evenhandedness to the failure of "explaining" by either side. The facts were quite the contrary. On the U.N. side are more than 22,000 Chinese and North Korean prisoners who have renounced Communism. The Communists pleaded with 3,173 of them in explaining sessions, and persuaded only 138—or less than 1%—to return to their Communist homelands.

Final defections: 22,000 Communists; 22 Americans.

This week the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission reported on the failure of its P.W. explanations. India, which had generally been in agreement with the Swiss and Swedes, abruptly reversed itself, and formed a majority with Communist Poland and Communist Czechoslovakia. This majority blamed South Korea for the fact that many anti-Red prisoners refused to be interviewed, and declared that the South Korean provost marshal in Seoul had an organization that functioned through the 64th U.N. Field Hospital and extended through all 55 compounds to coerce North Koreans and Chinese from going home. Refusing to sign this report, Sweden and Switzerland blamed drag-out tactics of Red interviewing teams for the failure.

Presumably, now that the explanations deadline is past, the 22,000 Chinese and North Koreans who chose freedom will have the opportunity of settling in South Korea or some other free country. The 22 Americans presumably will have a brief display value in Communist capitals.