The Prisoners

Every month since the treacherous North Korean attack on South Korea, the International Red Cross has politely asked the Communists for permission to inspect their prison camps. The Communists ignored the requests. Last week, when the Reds handed over their lists of U.N. prisoners at Panmunjom (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), no, one on the U.N. side knew what to expect.

The Red lists were rushed by helicopter to the U.N. "peace camp" at Munsan, where a special Eighth Army casualty team began mimeographing 30 copies. The work was finished at i a.m. By priority radio, the Eighth Army flashed the lists to the Pentagon in Washington.

They contained n,559 names--3,198 Americans, 1,219 other non-Koreans, 7,142 South Koreans. At General Ridgway's Tokyo headquarters, personnel clerks checking the U.S. names against their own records were impressed by the Communists' accuracy. Clerical errors ran to less than 1%.

Expectancies & Discrepancies. The U.S. names accounted for about 30% of the 11,042 Americans reported missing in action up to Dec. 12. This was a disappointing percentage compared to World War II, when 77% of all those ever reported as missing were recovered as prisoners. Most of those unaccounted for are assumed to have been killed. Some small number, cut off behind Communist lines, may have died of cold, hunger, wounds, disease; some were undoubtedly murdered; some undoubtedly died in the prison camps; some may be still alive. The British were delighted that 919 British names--out of some 1,100 reported missing--appeared on the lists. The South Koreans were shocked by more than 80,000 of their nationals unaccounted for. Although a large number of these are probably dead, other large numbers may have been impressed into the Red armies.

Some discrepancies troubled the U.S.-Sixty-six U.S. names which appeared on a list of no furnished to the Red Cross in August and September 1950 by the Communists were not on last week's roster. In August, Russia's ineffable Jacob Malik had mentioned the names of 38 U.S. prisoners who, he said, had signed an end-the-war appeal. Of these, only ten were on the list.

Ten for One. U.S. commanders were also worried by the condition of the more than 3,000 U.S. prisoners in Red stockades scattered from Pyongyang to the Yalu. By radio, Matt Ridgway dispatched a personal appeal to North Korea's Kim II Sung and Red China's Peng Teh-huai that they start permitting Red Cross inspection at once, as the U.N. has been doing all along. The U.N. subcommittee men at Panmunjom asked that sick and wounded prisoners be exchanged at once.

The Reds promised to think it over. They are demanding an all-for-all trade of prisoners, though the U.N. has captured ten times as many as they.

From the U.N., the Reds at Panmunjom got a list of Communist prisoners which was said to total 132,474 names. This compendium, typed on both sides of 2,000 sheets of paper, stood a foot high on the conference table. The Reds objected because the list was written in phonetic English.* "A pile of rubbish," they called it. The objection was odd, for the Communists had been furnished with lists of their prisoners all along through the Red Cross, and had never previously registered a complaint. Nevertheless the U.N. agreed to translate the whole list into Korean and Chinese characters.

Two days after Christmas the 30-day deadline on the tentative cease-fire line ends. The last chance of peace before the deadline seemed to have flickered out. But, so long as progress continues (even at the rate of two steps forward, one step back) the U.N. appeared willing to extend the deadline.

*According to the Geneva Convention, lists of war prisoners can be drawn up in the language of the captor country.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.