Aftermath of an ambush at the Korean DMZ, 1968
Published: July 17, 2012
Craig Garner ©Stars and Stripes
Panmunjom, Korea, April, 1968: A sign posted in front of a bullet-riddled United Nations Command vehicle confronts North Korean representatives during the 266th session of the Military Armistice Commission at the Panmunjom conference building. Four days earlier, on Easter Sunday, two American and two South Korean UNC soldiers were killed and two Americans wounded in an ambush while on patrol at the DMZ. In spite of considerable evidence found at the scene, North Korean Maj. Gen. Chung Kook Pak insisted at the session that "we had nothing to do with the incident." Rear Adm. John V. Smith, senior negotiator for the UNC, demanded "a concrete assurance that this will not happen again," but four more Americans were killed in a similar attack at the DMZ in October, 1969.
RELATED MATERIAL:
Three stories about the April, 1968 incident at the DMZ:
N. Korea tries to provoke war, says U.N. Command
DMZ ambush survivors seen lucky to be alive
Survivor thought ambush was all-out attack
THE SIGN:
The sign posted in front of the vehicle says, "This is how North Korean Communists abide by the armistice agreement. This is the United Nations Command vehicle which was ambushed by North Korean Communists in the headquarters area of the Military Armistice Commission on the night of 14 April 1968. The North Korean soldiers stopped the truck, machine gunned the occupants, killing four and wounding two and robbed the bodies of two pistols."
