70 Years Ago, The Korean War, The Times, Chester PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
5 August – 11 August 1951
The Times, Chester PA
An impasse is reached.
*****
On Sunday, General Ridgway urgently summoned his UN cease-fire negotiators to Tokyo, conferred with them on the suspended cease-fire talks, and held them on call overnight. Ridgway had suspended the talks because the Communists had “flagrantly” violated the neutrality of Kaesong by letting armed troops go near the conference house. He demanded firm assurances against repetition, and indicated that a violation would mean the abortive end of the parley. The assurances were reported to come from the Red leadership, all the way to Kim Il Sung, premier and his field commander, who asked for “immediate” resumption of negotiations. Instead, Ridgway summoned his team to Tokyo. His headquarters also announced officially that the UN command sought a truce line based “in effect” on the present battle front.
On Wednesday the four American members of the Allied truce team flew back to Korea from Tokyo amid continued Red official silence on the matter of the neutrality of Kaesong. The return of the negotiators was interpreted as indicating that the UN supreme commander expected an acceptable Communist reply. No official source would venture a prediction as to when the Reds would answer Ridgway or when, if at all, the deliberations would be resumed. The next day the Communists renewed their pledge to respect the neutrality of the negotiating site and called for an immediate resumption of negotiations. But at the same time they charged the Allies with four specific violations of neutrality, entered a “grave” protest, and themselves asked for new neutrality guarantees. The Red message fell short of the ironclad guarantee General Ridgway had demanded and implied that any further Red complaint would be based on faked material. The neutrality violation accusation was dismissed by the Allies.
When the talks resumed, the Communist negotiators sat in stony silence for two hours and eleven minutes, then flatly refused to consider any compromise solution to the deadlock over an armistice buffer zone. The Red stand virtually blasted any hope for an early armistice in the war. Some believed that only an “agree or fight” ultimatum by the UN would budge the Reds. A UN communique called the chief Communist negotiator’s silence “historical and unprecedented.” He broke his silence by refusing adamantly to consider the battle line area as a possible location of the cease-fire line; any line other than the 38th Parallel for that purpose; and any other item on the conference agenda. The chief UN truce negotiator, Vice-Admiral Turner Joy, accused the Reds of “slamming the door” on an agreement, saying, “You did not come here to negotiate an armistice.”
The Truman administration asked Congress to approve a $307 million [$3.2 billion in 2021] aid program for Chinese Nationalist forces on Taiwan. This would include $217 million in arms shipments to help Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek modernize an army of between 25 and 30 divisions. [One of the reasons for General MacArthur’s firing was an effort to engage the Nationalist Chinese in Korea.]
The House Appropriations Committee recommended a record $56 billion military budget [$588 billion in 2021], all but $1.5 billion less than what the military had asked for. The funds would support a 3.6-million-man force and assure a defense “sufficient to avert disaster and to retaliate successfully in the event of attack.”
The Defense Department reported a new total of 80,430 American casualties in the Korean fighting, an increase of 351 over the previous week, the lowest weekly increase since the start of the war.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Chester Times)