PRISONERS: The Great Escape

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It was a quiet, rainy night in Prisoner of War Camp No. 9, under the brow of a green hill near Pusan. At 2:30 a.m., Pfc. Willie Buhan was reading a book in the "maximum security" compound (for prisoners who had broken minor rules). He wasn't worried much, though vaguely aware that his two ROK buddies on guard duty had been acting sort of "funny." Willie heard a bell, then a knock, and went out to investigate. The next thing he knew, he was looking down the barrels of two carbines, one Garand rifle and one pistol—all in the hands of ROK guards.

They locked Willie Buhan up in a cell. He squirmed through the barbed wire on top of the cell, reached a phone and called the camp switchboard, but it was too late. By hundreds and thousands, in orderly file, No. g's anti-Communist North Korean prisoners were streaming through gaps in the barbed wire, previously cut from outside, to the hills, to the countryside, to the villages, to Pusan. At previously arranged meeting places, they were given rice, straw mats to sleep upon, old pants and open white shirts to wear, and identity cards. In Pusan they were told they need only apply to any dong (neighborhood society) for sanctuary. Any ROK soldier or cop would tell them where dong headquarters were.

On the same night, at about the same time, similar breaks were carried off in three other camps—No. 5 at Sangmudai, No. 6 at Nonsan, No. 7 at Masan. By morning, about 25,000 North Korean prisoners were free. In some cases, U.S. guards tried to hold back the tide with non injurious gas—tear and vomiting gas—with little or no result.

Wily Syngman Rhee had laid the plans for his coup carefully and minutely, two weeks in advance. On June 9, the ROK National Assembly passed a resolution demanding freedom for anti-Communist North Koreans. But later, Rhee had lulled the U.N. Command's suspicions by ordering his people to cease demonstrating against a truce, and by calling on news correspondents, both Korean and foreign, not to incite friction between South Ko rea and her allies.

Death on the Wire. At each of the seven camps for "non-repatriable," i.e., antiCommunist, North Koreans, the U.S. commander (usually a colonel) had only a handful of Americans. Most of the guards were ROKs. This was partly out of necessity, partly out of convenience, for ROK guards spoke the prisoners' language. In permitting the situation, the U.S. generals knew they were taking a risk—falling back on the hoary military cliche that it was a "calculated risk." They were guarding men they sympathized with, men who did not want to go back to Communist rule. They thought Rhee was blurring, or at least that he could be brought around. If the worst happened, they did not want U.S. troops to fire on masses of friendly Asians, which would be a political disaster of the first magnitude.