Act of War

by Jack Cheevers

  With two hostile armies facing each other at almost spit-in-the-eye range, the demilitarized zone was a tense, dangerous place. It ran the width of the Korean peninsula—151 miles—through terrain that was hilly, dense with trees, underbrush, and tall grass, and, in autumn, often shrouded in fog—an infiltrator’s dream. The DMZ’s westernmost 18 miles, directly north of Seoul, were guarded by the U.S. 2nd Division; South Korean troops patrolled the rest.

  The Americans bulldozed and defoliated their sector of the 4,000-yard-wide zone into a barren no-man’s-land. Bonesteel erected a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with triple rolls of concertina wire. Just south of that barrier was a strip of carefully raked sand to record commando footprints. But the North Koreans kept coming and the number of violent clashes soared. While 50 “significant incidents” involving communist guerrillas in the south were reported in 1966, the following year saw 566 such episodes.

  In August 1967, for example, infiltrators machine-gunned U.S. army engineers standing in a chow line, killing three and wounding 25. Raiders that year also blew up a 2nd Division barracks, leaving two soldiers dead, and derailed two South Korean trains, one carrying U.S. military supplies.

  Meanwhile, South Korean intelligence reported that Kim Il Sung was digging in for war—literally. Communist airfield facilities, factories, ammunition dumps, and fuel depots were moved underground. High-ranking government officials underwent combat training several days a week, and many civilian industries were converted to production of artillery, machine guns, and other arms. Fifteen thousand soldiers were trained in unconventional warfare in preparation for attacks on southern targets, including storage facilities for U.S. nuclear munitions.

  Kim’s audacious capture of the Pueblo gave him a propaganda bonanza at home and abroad. The spy ship’s presence off the North Korean coast was all he needed to validate his thesis that the hated Americans were planning a new war against the north. The dictator could therefore exhort his subjects to work harder and sacrifice more to build up the country’s defenses. And on a purely personal level, the supremely egotistical North Korean leader must have rejoiced at his startling success in humbling the capitalist devils.

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  For several days after the seizure, North Korean state media mixed shrill demands for an apology with dire predictions of how badly the United States would suffer if it were foolish enough to retaliate. But behind the scenes, a delicate diplomatic minuet began at Panmunjom, a village in the DMZ where the Korean War armistice had been signed. Ever since the war ended, the allies and communists had been meeting at Panmunjom to haggle over alleged breaches of the cease-fire agreement.

  American officials had secretly contacted members of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, a multinational body that investigated charges of armistice violations. The NNSC was composed of representatives of four nations that hadn’t taken part in the war: communist Poland and Czechoslovakia, and noncommunist Sweden and Switzerland. The U.S. government wanted the Swiss and Swedish commissioners to help with the Pueblo, but they were unwilling to intercede directly with the North Koreans.

  However, the Swiss and Swedish members were “seriously disturbed” by Pyongyang’s growing belligerence, and voiced their concerns to their communist counterparts. The Czech commissioner in turn approached Major General Pak Chung Kuk, an acerbic, chain-smoking veteran propagandist and negotiator for North Korea.

  Shortly after midnight on January 28, the Swiss representative telephoned American officials with the gratifying news that Pak had put out an apparent feeler.

  Pak had given the communist commissioners a confidential message for the United States. It began with a harsh warning: If President Johnson used force in an effort to retrieve the Pueblo or its crew, he’d “get only bodies.” But the North Korean general also said he was willing to discuss possible repatriation of the seamen if the negotiations were conducted “in a normal way”—an apparent reference to U.S.–North Korean talks at Panmunjom that had led to the release of two captured U.S. Army helicopter pilots in 1964.

  At the White House, Pak’s overture produced a swell of guarded optimism. “Sir, this is the break,” national security adviser Walt Rostow wrote in a memo to the president. “The problem is how to do it with maximum dignity.”

  However, the American ambassador to South Korea, William Porter, a clear-thinking career diplomat with a reputation for tackling tough assignments, wasn’t as sanguine. Porter had been in Korea for less than a year following a tour as deputy ambassador in South Vietnam. He was intimately familiar with communist-style guerrilla warfare and once spent a week traveling, by bus and on foot, through remote parts of South Korea to check on the inhabitants’ readiness to fight off North Korean commandos.

  Porter warned his State Department superiors in a secret cable that the “results could be explosive” if South Korea learned of Washington’s covert contact with the communists. President Park Chung Hee and his top aides already believed, the ambassador wrote, that the United States was more concerned about getting back its sailors than stopping North Korean terrorism against the south. Alarmed by the Blue House raid, South Korean military leaders were quietly discussing the possibility of pulling their crack troops out of Vietnam to reinforce the home front. They also were talking about withdrawing from General Bonesteel’s U.N. command in order to have a freer hand to retaliate against communist incursions. Porter didn’t think they were serious, but who knew what might happen if they found out Washington was reaching out to North Korea without their knowledge or consent?

  And sooner or later, he believed, the South Koreans would find out.

  Porter’s concerns drew a dry response from Sam Berger, head of the Korean Task Force. Washington fully understood the political situation in Seoul, he cabled back, but wanted to make it as “easy as possible for [the North Koreans] to get off the hook.” Raising the infiltration issue with the recalcitrant communists, he wrote, would only “complicate and delay” a solution to the Pueblo imbroglio.

  Berger predicted that just one private parley between Washington and Pyongyang would be needed to get back the sailors, if President Park could be persuaded not to interfere. Berger noted that Park was “wise and a realist,” and instructed Porter to promise him a wealth of new military assistance if he agreed to go along with the American game plan.

  Porter did as he was told. He assured Park the multitude of American warplanes and ships that had arrived would be kept in the region for the time being. Washington also planned to provide millions of dollars in extra military aid, including two aging Navy destroyers whose delivery previously had been contingent on Park’s sending more soldiers to Vietnam. The United States further pledged to give South Korea more counterguerrilla equipment, airlifting it with the same priority as supplies earmarked for American troops in Vietnam.

  Porter’s visit came not a moment too soon. Enraged by the Blue House plot, Park already had alerted his generals to be prepared to slash back at the north. But with all the additional military aid dangled before him, he agreed to stand down his forces and acquiesce in the U.S. negotiating strategy—at least for now. American officials then swiftly transmitted a letter to General Pak, saying they’d received his message via the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission and wanted a closed-door meeting at Panmunjom.

  But, in an early display of how mulish they could be in negotiations, the North Koreans promptly backpedaled.

  Pak insisted he’d sent no prior communication and couldn’t meet with the Americans if they continued to utter such “fabrications.” If Washington wanted a get-together, he said, it must submit a new letter deleting all references to Pak’s initial feeler.

  Porter figured the communists were up to their usual Orwellian trick of trying to rewrite history for their own purposes. They wanted to establish a paper trail indicating that the United States came groveling to them first, and to erase the NNSC’s role i
n brokering what Pyongyang evidently regarded as prestigious face-to-face negotiations with Washington.

  Porter wanted the record kept straight. He decided to give Pak a letter that dropped the offending facts, but to supplement it with a cover letter accurately recounting the genesis of the talks. Of course, the North Koreans could simply throw away the cover letter and use the underlying document as propaganda grist. But Porter’s approach ensured that the truth didn’t get completely buried.

  Pak accepted the ploy, and preparations began for the first clandestine rendezvous at Panmunjom. Washington’s point man was Rear Admiral John Victor Smith, senior U.N. representative to the Military Armistice Commission, another post–Korean War agency set up to settle cease-fire breaches through negotiation.

  A well-read Annapolis graduate with a lively sense of humor, Smith was the son of Marine Major General Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, who’d led amphibious invasions in the Pacific during World War II. Detailed to the MAC less than four months before the Pueblo seizure, the admiral had little enthusiasm for the job. He loathed the communists and the exhausting, hours-long rhetorical wrestling matches with his opposite number, General Pak, who made nonstop claims that U.N. troops were guilty of various outrages against the peace. “What we were doing was simply arguing for the world press, exchanging insults, and getting nowhere,” Smith later lamented.

  During an armistice commission meeting the day after the Pueblo hijack, for instance, Pak called Smith a “hooligan,” referred to President Kennedy as a “putrid corpse,” and labeled LBJ a “war maniac” fated to meet the same demise as Hitler. He characterized the United States as a “wolf [that] has gone mad and started biting anything that his fangs can reach.” When Smith demanded the immediate return of the spy ship and its crew, Pak laughed in his face.

  Such impudence infuriated the admiral, who reciprocated by contemptuously blowing cigar smoke at the North Korean general across the narrow negotiating table. When Pak was looking at him, Smith circumspectly sent the gray stream past his ear. But when the communist officer dropped his eyes to read something, Smith aimed his puffs directly at Pak’s head.

  Smith regarded the North Koreans as barbarians, and the endless, inconclusive squabbling at Panmunjom as a farce. Staring at Pak and his stone-faced aides in the MAC building, which sat directly athwart the cease-fire line dividing North and South Korea, the admiral felt physically vulnerable. Outside, U.N. and communist sentries spit, shouted epithets, and sometimes threw punches at one another. Gunfire often could be heard in the surrounding DMZ. Smith felt as if he were trapped in a big goldfish bowl, constantly exposed to possible kidnapping or assassination.

  Then there was the pure tedium of commission meetings, which lasted as long as nine hours, partly because of the cumbersome translation process. Smith’s statements had to be converted first into Korean and then Chinese, for the benefit of observers from the People’s Republic of China, Pyongyang’s rescuer in the Korean War. When Pak spoke, his words were translated into Chinese and English.

  If anyone on the American side got up for a bathroom break, the communists accused them of not being sincere about preserving peace in Korea. Rather than risk an international incident over a full bladder, Smith made a habit of going without liquids for 24 hours preceding a session with Pak.

  Despite Washington’s hopes for an early breakthrough, the first secret meeting at Panmunjom, on February 2, went nowhere. Smith asked for names of the dead and wounded seamen, but Pak ignored his request, saying only that the survivors were in good health and were being detained “without any inconvenience in their life.” He called the sailors “aggressors and criminals,” and criticized Smith for trying to cover up the spy ship’s provocative activities.

  Smith repeatedly pressed the communist negotiator to state when the crewmen would be released. But Pak, a four-year veteran of the Panmunjom follies, dodged the question, instead asking Smith whether he had anything more to say. Seeming flustered, the admiral kept reiterating his demands until Pak coldly told him to “change your stand and attitude in addressing the subject.” At the end of the session, Smith reported that he’d achieved “essentially nothing.”

  LBJ was disappointed at the failure of the inaugural meeting. The president had pushed hard for negotiations, which, if they succeeded, would obviate the need for military action. But the United States was no closer to getting Bucher and his men back after the second closed meeting, or the third, or the fourth. Smith kept denouncing the illegality of the Pueblo seizure, while Pak persistently accused Washington of trying to camouflage the ship’s hostile actions.

  After the second conference fizzled, Secretary of State Dean Rusk began to doubt that the smoke-blowing admiral was the right man for the job.

  “This is no reflection on his abilities as [a] military man,” wrote Rusk in an eyes-only cable to Ambassador Porter. “Pak has been in his job for years and has probably had [the] benefit of strenuous training in Communist polemics.”

  Porter and his embassy staff agreed. “We feel [Smith] is not psychologically suited nor does he have [the] temperament and mental agility for the job that has to be done at this time,” the ambassador cabled back. “I regret that I must recommend in the national interest that he be relieved but this should be without prejudice to his naval career.”

  But Smith was not removed, perhaps because Rusk concluded that replacing him would take too long. The admiral stayed on until May, when his regular tour of duty with the armistice commission was up. Meantime, the State Department tightly scripted every word he said to Pak, cabling lengthy statements for Smith to read verbatim during the secret meetings.

  Evidently unaware of the machinations to shunt him aside, Smith kept shuttling between Seoul and Panmunjom, often by helicopter. Security was a constant concern. At night soldiers guarded the drafty cottage he shared with his wife, Marion, at U.S. Eighth Army headquarters outside Seoul. Under his pillow the admiral kept a handgun.

  The Smiths had a pretty Korean maid, Suzy, whom they suspected of working for South Korean intelligence. Suzy paid close attention to the admiral’s lunch habits; if he didn’t come home for his midday meal, he might be headed to Panmunjom. Marion kept the maid guessing by telling her to set the table for two every day, whether or not her husband was actually coming.

  “Sometimes he couldn’t return until late at night and I was horribly worried,” she said in an interview more than 30 years later. “I’d sit up watching for the lights of the little helicopter to come over the mountains. It was a very tense period.”

  As Porter feared, the South Koreans soon found out about Smith’s activities and a national uproar ensued.

  Washington’s restrained response to the Pueblo incident already had angered many South Koreans. America’s failure to retaliate quickly and firmly, they believed, only encouraged Kim Il Sung to send more commandos to attack and kill southerners. But South Korean anxiety reached a crescendo with rumors that the United States might forge a separate peace with Kim. The most distasteful scenario involved an American apology to Pyongyang—an unthinkable humiliation, in the eyes of South Koreans, for their closest and strongest ally. As far as they were concerned, America’s disgrace would be their own. Moreover, once its sailors were free, how much would Washington care about stopping communist intruders in the DMZ?

  As the Panmunjom talks dragged on in February, South Koreans poured into the streets in protest. Students marched outside the U.S. embassy in Seoul, shouting over bullhorns for vengeance against Kim Il Sung. More than 100,000 people filled a Seoul stadium in 20-degree weather to demand more American and U.N. aid to stave off further Blue House–style raids. During the rally, South Korean veterans of Vietnam ceremonially nicked their foreheads and wrote anticommunist slogans in blood. Inside the American embassy, someone opened a letter from a man protesting North Korea’s “barbarous acts” and found a severed finger.

  A
t a bridge leading to Panmunjom, U.S. soldiers fired warning shots to stop a march by 500 students demanding an end to the covert negotiations. American spokesmen said none of the marchers, most of them teenage girls, were injured; Korean police reported nine seriously hurt. It was the first time American troops had clashed with South Koreans, an ugly and foreboding precedent.

  South Korean politicians and editorial writers were as incensed as the country’s youth. The National Assembly passed a unanimous resolution expressing “national indignation” at the talks; one legislator urged his colleagues to march on the American embassy and “make them come to their senses.” Newspapers stressed the need for “resolute action” against the north and denounced U.S. diplomatic efforts as “appeasement, indecisive, disappointing, wishful thinking, and nonsensical.” When Defense Secretary Robert McNamara acknowledged in a February 4 television interview that he couldn’t say for certain the Pueblo hadn’t crossed into North Korean waters at some point, many South Koreans interpreted the remark as a prelude to a craven American mea culpa.

  Rather than parley with the North Koreans, many southerners advocated attacking them. “We have got to do something to teach them a lesson even if it starts a world war,” fumed the chairman of the unicameral National Assembly’s Foreign Relations Committee. South Koreans in and out of government demanded an immediate halt to the Panmunjom talks. Prime Minister Chung Il Kwon tried to explain to Porter the depth of his countrymen’s anger by posing a hypothetical: If Cuban commandos attempted to storm the White House and murder President Johnson, and South Korea subsequently entered into closed-door negotiations with Fidel Castro, how would Americans feel?