The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [48]
"We know it was very scary to the North Koreans, because we were listening," said an American official in Washington with access to North Korean front-line communications. A U.S. intelligence analyst monitoring the radio net said that "it blew their fucking minds."
The North Korean leadership quickly recognized that the killings at the DMZ were a dangerous mistake and moved to reduce the danger. Kim Ii Sung claimed later that the Americans had started the fighting to help Ford win the U.S. presidential election but that the incident "no sooner happened than we realized that our soldiers had been taken in by the enemy's political scheme. So, we decided not to aggravate the incident any further."
Within an hour after the operation, the senior North Korean representative to the armistice commission, Major General Han Ju Kyong, requested a private meeting with the chief American representative, Rear Admiral Mark Frudden, to convey a message from Kim Il Sung. The personal message was Kim's first to the UN Command in the twenty-three-year history of the armistice. The usual fierce rhetoric was absent as Kim declared it "regretful" that an incident had occurred in the JSA and proposed that "both sides should make efforts" to avoid future clashes. The State Department initially rejected the Kim message as unacceptable because it did not forthrightly admit guilt, but then reversed itself after Habib and other Korean experts said that it was as close to an apology from Kim that could be obtained.
On August 25, in another surprise, North Korea proposed that to prevent future incidents, the Joint Security Area should be divided at the military demarcation line, which runs through it, and that henceforth KPA guards should stay north of the line and UN guards should stay south. The UN Command had made similar proposals several times in the past, but North Korea had not agreed. This time the concept was approved and details worked out with a minimum of controversy.
In the aftermath, some South Korean officials and the Seoul press harshly criticized the United States for not taking stronger action. As his fears subsided in the face of the U.S. buildup and North Korea's soft reaction, Park's belligerence toward North Korea seemed to grow. Questioned about Park's attitude at a White House meeting in mid-September, Sneider said that Park has "a parochial, Israeli complex stemming in part from the protection we have accorded to Korea for so long-Park tends to ignore or discount the costs we have to calculate in deciding how to react to North Korean provocations." The ambassador added, "Park may also have been influenced by his generals who were egging him on."
The brutal actions of the North Korean guards added immeasurably to the American perception of North Koreans as almost inhu man. Jimmy Lee, who served as the permanent U.S. Army civil servant on the Military Armistice Commission for almost thirty years, kept in his desk the gruesome photographs of the bloodied and battered bodies of Major Bonifas and Lieutenant Barrett. Bonifas was so badly beaten with the blunt end of an ax that his face was no longer recognizable. "Beneath the surface civility, this is what you are dealing with," Lee cautioned incoming U.S. officers at the DMZ.
Had different decisions been made in Washington on punitive actions or Kim Il Sung's statement of regret, the brutal killings in the DMZ might have led to a wider conflict on the peninsula with unknown results. A different set of decisions by Kim or a subordinate commander-especially an attempt to contest Operation Paul Bunyan with force of arms-would almost certainly have led to a sharp escalation. Had this happened, the course of history could have been changed in the United States as well as in Korea. In Scowcroft's