Peace Terms

What is the U.S. willing to settle for in Korea? Testifying before the MacArthur investigating committee, Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave a surprising answer: the U.S. will be content to stop the fighting at the 38th parallel. It will be willing to leave North Korea in Communist hands, so long as there are "reliable assurances" that the Communists will not renew their aggression. A "unified, free and democratic Korea" is not one of U.S. war aims.

Acheson drew a sharp distinction between the U.N.'s military objectives in Korea and its political objectives. Said he: "Our objective is to stop the attack, end the aggression, restore peace--providing against the renewal of the aggression . . . That is the military objective of the United Nations as laid down by the United Nations itself . . . The United Nations has, since 1947, and the United States has, since 1943 or 1944, stood for a unified, free and democratic Korea. That is still our purpose and is still the purpose of the United Nations. I do not understand it to be a war aim. In other words, that is sought, to be achieved by peaceful means, just as was being attempted before this aggression."

The intervention of the Chinese Communists had made unification of Korea "militarily difficult, if not impossible," said Acheson. But U.N. "forces were not put into Korea to do that when they went in in June," he insisted.

Asked New Jersey's Senator H. Alexander Smith: "Does that suggest the possibility of a cease-fire at or near the 38th parallel?" Said Acheson: "If you could have a real settlement, that would accomplish the military purposes in Korea."

SMITH: "How would you visualize the prevention of the same thing happening over again?"

ACHESON: "If you once get the conviction on the part of the Chinese that they . . . haven't got the strength, to do what they want from the military point of view . . . The way is open for some sort of a settlement in Korea which can be accepted [by both sides] on the basis of mutually known strengths."

SMITH : "If we stop where we began ... I have great difficulty in justifying the casualties, which . . . are some 141,000, counting combat and other casualties . . ."

ACHESON: "Senator, if you accomplish what you started out to do, I don't think that is synonymous with saying you stopped where you began. We started out to do two things. One is repel the armed attack, and the other is to restore peace and security in the area. Now, if we do those two things, we have done what we started out to do, and I should think that is success."

It was a frank admission that the Administration had once hoped, but could no longer hope to tidy up that torn country by military action. To get a cease-fire agreement from the Communists, the Administration was resigned to the minimum goal--the restoration of the status quo ante. The problem of a divided Korea, Communist in the north, free in the south, would remain--a smoldering time-bomb under the shaky structure of world peace.

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