Frustration at Panmunjom

The red silk flags of Communist China and North Korea snapped briskly last week from the triumphal arch at Panmunjom, close by the moldering straw hut where the U.N. worked out the truce. There were no U.N. flags on display, for Panmunjom, "neutral" center of Korea, lies in Communist territory. To frustrated and bitter Americans, this Communist dominance of the scene--legal as it is--reflected a growing reality last week.

A few thousand yards south of this bustling new community, the 2,500 hutments and 40-odd compounds of Indian Village lay sprawling across barren ridges and hillsides. In the compounds, some 22,500 desperate anti-Communist Chinese and North Korean P.W.s were killing time, giving one another anti-Communist classes and pep talks, chipping makeshift daggers from broken urinals, shouting "Death to Mao the Dog Communist!" for the benefit of passersby.

Across the ten-foot barbed wire, the 5,500 Indian guards watched keenly for the first signs of the mass breakout they dreaded. Korean veterans called the Indians one of the best outfits they had seen --cracker-crisp Rajputana Rifles in bottle-green turbans and berets, Dogras. Jats. Mahrattas, disciplined so they could take P.W. spittle in the face without a murmur, which they often did.

Brandy & Soda. Upon the fairness of the Indians on the scene now lie the precarious hopes of the P.W.s, for as the weeks go by, the clauses in the armistice terms and the hostile attitude of India's Prime Minister Nehru seem more and more stacked against the anti-Communist prisoners. Handsome, husky Lieut. General K. S. Thimayya, 47, chairman of the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, was one of the first Indians to get into Sandhurst, Britain's West Point; he was the first Indian officer to command a brigade in World War II. "Thimmy" Thimayya, who won the D.S.O. against the Japanese, is perhaps the most promising soldier-diplomat in all India.

One day last week, Thimayya summoned U.N. and Communist correspondents to Panmunjom for his first press conference. For two hours, coolly, he sought to allay U.N. fears that the" P.W.s would be coerced by Communist "explainers" into going back to their Communist homelands. The P.W.s would have to go to the explanation huts, he said, "but how do you make a man listen?"

One by one, U.N. newsmen voiced specific U.N. worries. How long would each explanation session last? "I think we can ask the P.W.s to listen for five or ten minutes." Would P.W.s have to take more than one explanation? He did not think it possible. Would the 90-day explanation period be lengthened, as the Communists demanded? Not unless both sides agreed. (The U.N. does not.) Could his men stop a breakout? Yes, but "with terrible slaughter." Would he stop one?

"If our troops are attacked, we will take such action in self-defense as may be necessary." The questions answered, General Thimayya relaxed. "Now all I need," he said, "is a brandy and soda."

"Order That Man." At India's request, the U.S. warned Syngman Rhee against breaking the peace at Indian Village, as South Korea had threatened. The U.N. command pulled back South Korean marines from positions where they could have helped a breakout, and replaced them with U.S. marines.

But India's Nehru, who apparently believes that the U.N. holds the anti-Communist P.W.s under some form of duress, was not convinced at all. "Recent developments," he said in faraway Bombay, "have made me wonder if the U.S. is serious about an armistice . . . One has the suspicion that an attempt is being made, certainly by the South Korean government, to prevent the commission from functioning."

Then Nehru announced his support for one major Communist position, to wit, that there should be "90 clear days" for explanations--90 days after the construction of explanation huts, not 90 days after the transfer of P.W.s to Indian custody, as the armistice specifically ruled. In New Delhi, one of Nehru's senior aides also suggested that the U.S. do more to curb its ally, President Rhee. "What we want," he said, "is an unambiguous statement that the South Koreans are in the wrong and will be kept under control . . . It is for the U.S. to order that man."

Names & Addresses. The U.N. position has been further compromised by a monumental U.N. blunder. The U.N. had apparently handed the Indian custodial force a complete list, in English and Chinese, not only of the names, ranks and serial numbers of the P.W.s (which is all they were required to do), but of their parents and home-town addresses as well. If this list passes from the Indian guards to the Polish and Czech members of the commission, the U.N.'s basic principle of "no forced repatriation" will look sick indeed: the Communists could simply tell the P.W.s, via explainers or the camp grapevine, to return home or accept reprisals against their families.

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