At Last

Truce came to Korea in a stark, deliberately underplayed ceremony.

At Panmunjom, shortly before 10 a.m. (the hour fixed for the signing), nervous little Communist sentries in baggy pants and wilting red epaulettes scurried about, brushing off the board walk where their masters were to tread. The bleak, new truce building, hastily and especially erected by the Reds, smelled of fresh pine. Outside, it still showed the marks of two big Picasso-style peace doves, put up by the Reds, taken down at Mark Clark's demand. Inside it was stifling hot. Sweating U.N. observers and correspondents, including officers from each national contingent, filed in and sat on metal chairs at one side of the hall; the Communist group sat at the other side. U.N. and Communist guards stood motionless around the walls. There were three large tables, one for documents, a second bearing a U.N. flag on a brass stand, the third with a North Korean flag similarly mounted.

Promptly at 10, the two chief actors entered. Lieut. General William K. Harrison, the U.N. senior delegate, tieless and without decorations, sat down at a table, methodically began to sign for the U.N. with his own ten-year-old fountain pen. North Korea's starchy little Nam II, sweating profusely in his heavy tunic, his chest displaying a row of gold medals the size of tangerines, took his seat at the other table, signing for the enemy. Each man signed 18 copies of the main truce documents (six each in English, Korean, Chinese), which aides carried back & forth. The rumble of artillery still rolled through the building. Flashbulbs blazed and cameras whirred as the two chief delegates silently wrote. When they had finished, West Pointer Harrison and Nam II, schoolteacher in uniform, rose and departed without a word to each other, or even a nod or a handshake.

Without Fireworks. Outside, a correspondent asked a British officer whether the Commonwealth Division would celebrate with the traditional fireworks. "No," said the Briton, "there is nothing to celebrate. Both sides have lost."

Thus, 37 months and two days after the Russian-trained North Koreans attacked across the 38th parallel, the Korean war--a devastating struggle, laced from the start with glory, agony, triumph, frustration--came to a halt, perhaps temporary, perhaps permanent. The war had cost the U.S. more than 140,000 casualties (some 25,000 dead, 102,000 wounded, 13,000 missing and captured), $22 billion. The problem of ending it had roweled the best brains of two U.S. Administrations, and had helped to win a national election for one, to lose it for the other.

Dull and Resigned. The almost-forgotten men of the war--the U.N. prisoners still in Communist hands--were expected to start coming back through the Panmunjom exchange site within a week. The latest prisoner list tendered by the Reds showed 3,313 Americans, 8,186 South Koreans, 922 British Commonwealth, 342 others. Enemy prisoners who had opted for repatriation were to be brought north at the rate of more than 2,500 a day.

Syngman Rhee, Korea's veteran fighter for freedom, sat on a stone bench in his garden at Seoul. He still spoke against the truce, but his talk now was dull and resigned. There had been some fear that his ROK troops might refuse to withdraw from the buffer zone--but they ceased fire along with their U.N. comrades in arms (see below). Syngman Rhee, whose opposition might have wrecked the truce if the Communist hunger for a truce had not been voracious, now declared: "My desire is strong not to follow unilateral policy if it can be avoided."

Up to the last, irritations and uncertainties had persisted.. General Mark Clark, who flew from Tokyo to Seoul in his Constellation, had expected to sign the truce at Panmunjom, with Kim II Sung and Peng Teh-huai (the North Korean and Chinese commanders) as the other signatories. But for this, the Reds made unacceptable conditions: no South Koreans or reporters could be present.

So Clark signed alone in a tin-roofed movie hall at Munsan, the allied truce base, three hours after the Panmunjom signing, and Kim and Peng presumably signed in their own lair at Pyongyang. Behind Clark, ramrod stiff, jaws clamped tight, sat ROK Major General Choi Duk Shin. Spotting him after the signing, Clark said, "I'm glad you came." "Thank you," said General Choi.

It was then that Mark Clark, seeming to think a few words required of him before the reporters and cameramen, said: "I cannot find it in me to exult at this hour."

Complex Justification. Only in this single remark did some of the private bitterness of the U.N. command reach the surface. The top commanders, like everyone else, were glad that the bloodshed was ended, but they took no pride in their achievement, and they felt no satisfaction in the armistice they were ordered to sign. They knew the argument that in this war freedom had been defended and aggression repelled, but, cabled TIME Correspondent Dwight Martin, "they all seem concerned that some day they will be called on to explain why they signed the present armistice. Several I've talked to specifically think in terms of investigating committees demanding to know whether it is a fact that they sold out Korea. They frankly admit that complex justifications and explanations, currently acceptable, may look pretty lame in a year or so."

*Eighty-five per cent of the wounded later returned to duty.

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