Crossing Through No-Man's Land

The mysterious defection of an all-American G.I. Joey

It is an edgy, spartan existence for U.S. soldiers stationed along the two-mile-wide Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea. In the "truce village" of Panmunjom, through which the border runs, two large bunkers, essentially allied observation posts, are dug into barren knolls. One of the bunkers is known as Guard Post Ouellette.

Early on the morning of Aug. 28, PFC Joseph White of St. Louis was on duty, assigned to scan the North Korean frontier just 15 yds. away. Some time before dawn, White walked out to the chain-link fence surrounding Guard Post Ouellette, blasted the lock on the gate (probably with his M16) and scurried north. About 7:20 a.m., an Army comrade spotted him on the other side of the rugged no-man's land: still carrying his rifle, the blond G.I. was grabbed by a squad of North Koreans and hustled down into their bunker.

The soldiers seemed to handle White roughly. When the North Koreans twice refused a request from White's commander for a face-to-face meeting with the G.I., it seemed possible that he was not, as the Communists claimed, under their "warm protection" after having "requested political asylum." Late last week, however, the Army concluded officially that White, 20, had shot open the guard-post lock. If, in fact, he walked across the DMZ voluntarily, it would mark the first defection by a U.S. soldier in Korea in 17 years, and the fifth since the Korean War ended in 1953.*

On Saturday North Korea's news agency quoted White as saying that he had defected of his own free will. "I sought a political refuge not by any passing emotion but by my deep emotion," White reportedly told a press conference. He came to North Korea because it was "unjustifiable for the U.S. to send troops to South Korea," the news agency quoted him as saying. "I also wanted to show the world the corruptness, criminality, immorality, weakness and hedonism of the U.S."

Such misgivings, if true, had never surfaced before. As the fourth of five children in his south St. Louis working-class neighborhood, White was well behaved and earnest, a clean-cut straight arrow who talked about making a career of the Army. "Why," wondered his incredulous mother, "would he give up all that for one bowl of rice a day for the rest of his life?"

Why, indeed? White was a so-so student at St. John the Baptist High School, indifferent to sports and too shy to be very popular, but he still qualified as an old-fashioned all-American youngster. He was a devoted reader, especially of military histories, and a Boy Scout. He was a devout Roman Catholic and a volunteer counselor at a camp for handicapped children. He was apparently never in the slightest trouble, not in St. Louis, not during his studious postgraduate year at a Missouri military academy, and not during his ten months in the Army.

White had always had a political bent: conservative and unabashedly patriotic.

He made sure the family's flag flew on national holidays, and at sunset, his mother remembers, "it always had to be folded just right." At 17 he was doing chores for the Reagan presidential campaign.

White's letters home from the DMZ, where he had arrived only last July, were peppered with standard G.I. grumbling, but he seemed to like the work.

There was no sign of special emotional strain or philosophical crisis. "I must say," he wrote proudly to his parents seven weeks ago, "it was a blast driving an APC [armored personnel carrier]."

Kathleen and Norval White, an autoworker, understandably cannot believe that their good Republican son is a willing refugee in North Korea. "I have to fight to save my son," Mrs. White says. "If they can capture one, they can do it to a hundred, and soon they'll be on the West Coast." On the mantel sit two photographs of her G.I. Joey. "They're breaking him down," insists Mr. White, at once hopeful and horrified that he is right. "My son's still resisting. I know he is." Perhaps Father knows best. But not even he has any real idea why on earth Joseph White took a walk in the dark to North Korea.

*The earlier defectors were all Army enlisted men. Three deserted during 1962-63, the fourth in 1965. Their present whereabouts is unknown.

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