One afternoon last week in the stuffy green Quonset hut that is the heart of the scrubby no man's land of Panmunjom, three U.S. generals, a British brigadier and a Republic of Korea air-force officer coldly confronted 40 North Korean commissars and military men. "I have a statement to make," began Major General Homer L. Litzenberg, U.S.M.C., in a level voice. Then, while the Communists listened attentively, he told them that the U.N. Command no longer felt bound by subparagraph 13D of the Korean armistice agreement—the clause limiting introduction of new weapons into Korea.
Under 13D, both parties to the armistice agreed not to bring any more weapons into Korea. They were to replace worn-out weapons only "on the basis of piece-for-piece of the same effectiveness and type," to be brought in only through specified ports of entry under the supervision of neutral inspection teams provided by Sweden, Switzerland, Poland and Czechoslovakia.
But soon the Reds were building railroad tracks around the specified ports of entry, running in trainloads of new equipment and stalling and frustrating visits by the neutral inspectors.
A year ago the outraged U.N. Command retaliated by ousting neutral inspection teams from South Korea, but continued to honor its own commitments. Though the Reds had neither jet planes nor operational airfields to handle them in North Korea at war's end, they had more than 500 jet fighters and 25 airfields there by this spring. (The U.N. has had six squadrons of F-86s on station since the armistice.) The two U.S. divisions in South Korea made do with old weapons, some no longer included in U.S. Army basic training. North Koreans and Chinese armored themselves in all the latest Soviet hardware.
U.N. commanders were worried that the balance of military power in Korea was against them. Old Syngman Rhee bluntly demanded atomic weapons. This week, as the result of the Panmunjom meeting, a force of F-100 jet fighters capable of delivering tactical atomic bombs will begin to move into Korea. They will be followed by a shipment of up-to-date infantry weapons, but for the time being the U.N. Command will not get atomic rockets or guided missiles.
"Preparations for a new war," complained the Communists mechanically. But the stolidity of their faces on receiving the news suggested that what really surprised the Communists was that the U.N. and U.S. had allowed themselves to be suckered for so long.