The Other Side

Now it was the turn of the United Nations to do the explaining. In four days last week, 130 South Korean prisoners marched dutifully into the explanation tents at Panmunjom. Their Chinese P.W. uniforms.betrayed their long years of captivity; they were faded by constant washing to a light robin's egg blue. Their minds, too, had been effectively laundered. All 130 refused to go back to South Korea, including four girl P.W.s in silk jackets and flowing skirts, who did folk dances as they waited their turn in the cold.

The Red P.W.s were polite. They bowed to everyone in the tents, they offered Chinese cigarettes to the Indian guards and assured them: "There will be no profanity." They told the South Korean explainers: "Thank you for coming so far. Please begin." The explainers were just as polite: "Since you are former members of the ROK Army, we would like to do our best lest you be misled."

Some ROK explainers handed the Red P.W.s written statements from South Korea's Defense Minister Sohn Won II that promised: "You will get all your back pay. You will be promoted in the army. You will be cited for meritorious achievement. You will be given priority to take a government job." But the unbelieving Red P.W.s stayed hunched on their backless wooden benches. They chain-smoked and tried to keep warm. One started to make a propaganda speech ("I saw Americans bombing our camps with germs . . ."), but the Indian chairman quickly cut him off. The others spoke little, and without passion. Only when the ROK explainers showed photographs or played tape recordings from home did the Red P.W.s show emotion. One moon-faced girl in pigtails stared at a photograph of her home street in Seoul, then cried: "I don't want to see it again." A thin-faced P.W. jumped up when the explainers played a message from his sister. "Talk all you want," he shouted, "but don't play that record." Though the recordings were ineffective in getting back the South Koreans, their use set a precedent: the U.N. expects to play such recordings from home to the 22 pro-Communist U.S. prisoners, when they come up for explanations next week.

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