South Korea. Mark Dake
Pak a tough officer, with a reputation for discipline, demanding law and order from his soldiers in the JSA. The UNC had nicknamed him “Bulldog,” for his penchant for provoking incidents. In 1974, for example, when a high-ranking U.S. officer was touring the JSA, UNC guards prevented the KPA from snapping the officer’s photo. Pak, in response, “kicked an American officer in the groin.”
As the UNC work crew began trimming the tree, Pak confronted Bonifas and ordered him to instruct his men to cease work. It was 10:50 a.m. Bonifas told his crew to continue. Pak became incensed and threatened to kill him. He called for reinforcements. By eleven a.m. there were about thirty KPA soldiers gathered under the tree.
Pak then slipped off his wristwatch, wrapped it in a white handkerchief, put it in his trousers pocket, and shouted, “Mi gun a chu I cha!” (“Kill the U.S. aggressors!”).
“He pounced upon Captain Bonifas, striking him in the back and knocking him to the ground,” wrote Kirkbride. “Bonifas was [then] beaten to death by at least five other KPA guards.”
The melee lasted about four minutes and was only stopped when Bonifas’s truck driver positioned his vehicle over his commander’s mutilated body. Four U.S. enlisted men and four ROK soldiers were injured. Meanwhile, Barrett was separated from the other men and systematically bludgeoned with an axe.
The incident was captured on film by a UN guard stationed at one of the posts who had a movie camera with a telephoto lens. Clips from the footage were shown on American television news programs the following night. In DMZ: A Story of the Panmunjom Axe Murder, Kirkbride included sixteen still frames from that assault, twelve depicting KPA soldiers massing around the officers, swinging axes. The two Americans were subsequently taken to hospital, but it was too late. Both had succumbed to their injuries. Bonifas, a West Point graduate, had volunteered to be sent to Korea, and was scheduled to return home to Newburgh, New York, to his wife and three young children, in just two weeks.
In Washington, the National Military Command Centre and Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon were notified within two hours of the deaths. Washington taxed Eighth Army Commanding General Richard G. Stilwell in Seoul with devising a response plan. Stillwell and his officers hatched Operation Paul Bunyan. It called for sixteen ROK engineers to be sent to the tree to cut it down, protected by infantry, attack helicopters and tanks. Sixty-four members of the elite 1st ROK Special Forces Brigade would surround the tree. In the air above would be twenty American UH-1 Huey helicopters carrying U.S. troops to be placed on the ground if KPA forces responded. Eight American Cobra attack helicopters would be circling, another eight idling on the ground, and seven on standby. An American platoon of twenty Sheridan tanks would be moved to the JSA, ready to level it with shells, to allow forces to evacuate if the KPA attacked.
And there was more, much more. Within twenty hours of the killings, the Pentagon ordered U.S. air and naval reinforcements to Korea, and a squadron of F-111 fighter jets stationed in Idaho flew nonstop to Suwon Air Base, just south of Seoul. A number of F-4 Phantom fighters stationed in Okinawa and two B-52 bombers from Guam were also sent to Korea. The U.S. Fifth Air Force in Yogota, Japan, was placed on increased readiness. Parts of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and the aircraft carrier USS Midway were directed to the peninsula. In the South, the 38th Air Defense Artillery Brigade — which would control an air war — went into full readiness. The ROK’s 600,000 and the U.S.’s 37,000 troops in the South were put on alert for a mission they knew little about. This was big.
Two days later, on August 19, Operation Paul Bunyan was approved by official channels in Washington. Later that day, President Ford gave final approval. By late evening, General Stilwell, in Seoul, still had not received official word when the mission would go. He needed to know by midnight if he was to carry out the plan the next day. With fifteen minutes to spare, he got his reply: commence operations at seven a.m. He briefed ROK and U.S. battalion commanders, who briefed their soldiers.
“Pray we can get through the next day without war,” Stilwell told his wife, the military weight of the ROK and U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy, directed at Panmunjeom.
Just after seven the next morning, three days after the murders, a U.S. officer entered the JSA and announced to a North officer that the operation was commencing. Minutes later, the operation’s first element crossed into the DMZ. Major Kirkbride, who spoke some Korean, had a firsthand view as interpreter for the ROK troops. The sixty-four ROK Special Forces, clutching long wooden clubs, formed a human ring around the engineers at the tree. Nearby, ROK Reconnaissance troops were concealed at the line of trees and U.S. helicopters buzzed low overhead.
To cut through the poplar’s three massive limbs required thirteen chainsaws — each kept getting gummed up with sap. Four burned out. By seven forty-five, the tree was finally down. All forces, except ROK Reconnaissance, began to depart. By eight o’clock, the operation was complete. A U.S officer in an overhead helicopter said he sighted upwards of five hundred KPA soldiers in the JSA, dashing about in all directions, many in groups of two, three, or more, apparently confused about the show of force. From a tunnel in the JSA previously unknown to UNC, KPA soldiers had emerged wearing helmets and carrying rifles.
By four thirty in the afternoon, all U.S. and ROK forces, except aviators, had returned to their home bases to wait out the night on alert. No one knew how North Korea would react. General Stilwell, who had managed to get only an hour of sleep in the previous seventy-two hours, took the opportunity to get some shuteye. In the following weeks, numerous meetings between the two sides were held at the MAC building in the JSA. The UNC demanded an apology for the murders. Kim Il-sung offered a half-hearted response. After a month, all UNC units returned to normal duties.
Changes came in the JSA because of the incident. Personnel from both countries, once free to wander the entire compound, were now relegated to their own side. A concrete sidewalk — today visible along Conference Row — was poured to delineate the demarcation line. As well, The Bridge of No Return was permanently shuttered. As for Lieutenant Pak, he continued to patrol the JSA. But after the 1984 firefight involving the Russian, Matauzik, Kirkbride claims that Pak was not seen again, and speculated he may have been one of the three KPA guards killed during that gun battle.
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The military bus returned us to Camp Bonifas. It was late afternoon. We transferred back onto our tour bus and prepared to leave for the trip back to Seoul. Fortunately, I had not been manhandled, bullied, or ridiculed by North guards, or by Naumenkof or any fellow tour members. As we motored toward Seoul, at the front of the bus, our loquacious Korean guide was talking a mile a minute over the loudspeaker — just as he had that morning on our way north. He spoke a language I was not familiar with, though snippets reminded me of English. His pronunciation was so garbled and indecipherable, it sounded like his mouth was full of marbles. So that’s what I called him.
“Do you understand what Marbles is saying, Gail?” I asked my fellow Canadian seatmate, a woman from Kamloops, British Columbia, who was in Seoul visiting her daughter, who was also teaching English.
“No,” Gail said, grinning.
“Neither do I.”
We crossed back over the Imjin River and an hour later were back among Seoul’s mass of concrete and steel. Our trip ended where it had begun that morning: at Yongsan Garrison at the USO compound in Camp Kim. Yongsan was built by the Japanese in 1910, and was later the base for the U.S.’s Korean headquarters. It’s located in south central Seoul, just north of the Han River and near Itaewon, a crowded and bustling area of old and new shops, and bars and restaurants commonly patronized by foreigners. Just north is the singular, broad, and wooded Nam Mountain. Yongsan base may be the world’s only military camp located in a major city.
Inside the USO compound were a few civilians and a smattering of young soldiers wearing military fatigues. As a well-deserved reward for having successfully survived my trip to the JSA unscathed, I treated myself to a chocolate bar and a Coke at the snack bar, then relaxed on a big comfortable sofa in front of a big-screen TV. It was tuned to FOX, and the blonde host was pontificating about something or other, so I soon left and took the subway back to my small flat in Myeongil-dong in southeast Seoul.
I’ve noticed that South Koreans seem