The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Plain Speaker, Hazelton PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
2 March 1952 – 8 March 1952
The Plain Speaker, Hazelton PA
Germ warfare is charged.
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Although Communist truce negotiators angrily accused the United Nations command of lying and stalling, the Reds acknowledged that the UN had a legal right to reject Russia as a neutral inspector of an armistice, but insisted that the Allies give logical reasons. It was an acrimonious session; at one point an Allied negotiator had to interrupt a Red negotiator to ask him to stop screaming. Korean truce talks were right back where they were on 18 December, when lists of prisoners were exchanged, a chief negotiator said after arguing with the Communists whether 50,000 missing Allied troops actually existed. The Allies demanded the Reds account for the missing men, South Korean soldiers the UN command says the Reds incorporated into the North Korean army.
Late in the week the deadlocked Korean truce talks bogged down even further as Communist negotiators insisted that neutral teams, including Russians, be permitted to inspect secret equipment during an armistice. Communist negotiators also sought to forestall a possible naval blockade of the Red China coast or an invasion of the mainland. The Reds proposed writing a ban into a Korean armistice. In addition, a UN truce negotiator bluntly accused the Communists of secretly imprisoning captured Allied soldiers, including Americans, in Red China. The North Koreans called the charge a “fabrication” and a further attempt to delap the armistice negotiations.
On Wednesday the US Secretary of State challenged the Communists to submit to impartial investigation their “fantastic” charge that the Allies were waging germ warfare in Korea. The secretary said there appeared to be a serious plague epidemic in Communist-controlled Korea. But he emphasized that it was due to the Reds’ inability to care for the people, not to a “fantastic plot” by the United Nations.
Outnumbered American Sabre Jets shut down two communist MIG-15 jets and damaged five others as an estimated 250 Red fighters swept south of the Yalu River. The Sabres tangled with the swift MIGs in four separate battles. The two Red jets the Air Force said were shot down boosted to 200 the number of MIGs destroyed by Fifth Air Force planes in Korea, a spokesman said. And some of the Communist jets strayed far south of their usual haunts, almost to the battle line. Two MIGs attacked a pair of propeller-driven F-51 Mustangs south of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, but both of the Mustangs hedge-hopped safely back to base, the Fifth Air Force said. On Wednesday the Allies bagged five more MIGs near the Yalu. It was the biggest bag since 25 January, when Sabre pilots destroyed ten.
On Tuesday, UN fighter pilots bombed and machinegunned frontline positions while the opposing ground armies sent out only light patrols. Marne Corsairs killed 20 Communists north of Kumhwa on the central front. Other UN fighter-bombers killed about 25 Reds in the Yonchon area on the western front. Both ruined towns were in sectors where ground fighting picked up briefly last weekend.
The Truman administration decided against any move to carry the Korean War to China even if the truce talks collapse. The official said that is the present basic policy, but how it is applied if and when the collapse occurs will undoubtedly depend on what the Communists do and what the American people think about it. In the highest levels of the Defense and State departments it is recognized, officials privately concede, that popular indignation could force the United States in some circumstances to take action which would either contradict or diverge from its present policy.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Hazelton Plain Speaker)