N. Korea tries to provoke war, says U.N. Command
Rear Adm. John V. Smith reads a list of charges to North Korean Gen. Chung Kook Pak across the conference table at the 266 meeting of the Military Armistice Commission in April, 1968, days after four U.N. Command soldiers were killed in an ambush at the DMZ.
By Stars and Stripes and wire reports | April 20, 1968
PANMUNJOM, Korea — U.S. Rear Adm. John V. Smith, senior negotiator for the United Nations Command (UNC) denounced Communist North Korea Thursday for "war provocation of the most serious magnitude."
Smith reviewed serious incidents at the 266th meeting of the Military Armistice Commission, citing the seizure of the USS Pueblo among the most significant acts of war.
North Korea flatly rejected UN charges that Communist raiders ambushed a UNC guard truck near Panmunjom Easter Sunday, killing four soldiers, two American and two South Korean, and wounding two others.
North Korean Maj. Gen. Chung Kook Pak told the command that "We have nothing to do with the incident and we are not responsible for it which took place well inside your territory."
Evidence of the attack, which Smith charged as "murderous atrocity and an animal act," the bullet-riddled truck in which the four UNC guards were killed, was displayed outside the conference room during the commission's meeting.
Countering the ambush charge, and assault charges from an earlier incident, the North Koreans recalled the Pueblo incident.
Pak charged that the U.S. has "massed large aggressive forces in South Korea and in the sea of our country" and has intensified its "aggressive acts" since the capture of the ship.
Pak also said the meeting in Honolulu between U.S. President Johnson and South Korean President Park was a "direct extension of the designs for the provocation of a new war."
Smith added: "I agree there is a danger of war breaking out, and it is caused by your aggression, your threat, and your well-known arms buildup."
Smith also noted that the UNC now has the military strength to thwart any premeditated Communist attack in Korea.
Photographs taken by Lt. Cmdr. Stanley Piskorski, UNC joint duty officer, of an altercation between North Korean guards and UNC personnel on April 12, were displayed at the session.
Smith presented the photos to Pak, but the North Korean refused to view them. Smith ordered: "Lift up your head comrade Pak and look." Pak did so, and grinned.
One of the photos showed a North Korean guard behind a UNC soldier, ready to strike him with a closed fist.
Smith concluded his admonishment of North Korea by saying, "What the United Nations Command wants from you, now, is a concrete assurance that this will not happen again."