Chapter 29 7. Strange Negotiations

Coincidentally, on August 4, when a company of the DPRK's small guard stationed in Kaesong was assigned to maintain the security of the neutral zone, some of the guards strayed into the Kaesong neutral zone agreed by the two sides on the way to the meeting.Joey raised the matter at the negotiation meeting on the afternoon of August 4th.After investigation, the DPRK and China confirmed that there was such an incident. On the 5th, they admitted to the US side that they had made a mistake, and made a guarantee that such incidents would not recur in the future.However, in order to get rid of the passive situation and divert the blame from the world public opinion, Li Qiwei repeated the old trick of the "reporter's problem" on July 12, seized the occasional incident of entering the venue area by mistake, and declared on August 5 that the negotiators would not come to the meeting , resulting in another suspension of the Armistice Conference.

On the 6th, the DPRK and China sent a letter to Li Qiwei in the name of Kim Il-sung and Peng Dehuai, expressing the above-mentioned attitude of the DPRK and China again, and proposed that the negotiation meeting should not be interrupted because of this accidental incident. The US side's attempt to use the suspension of the meeting to gain public opinion has not worked, and it knows that we will not easily break with it, so it continues to engage in unreasonable entanglements. After the resumption of the meeting on August 10, Joey first asserted arbitrarily: "At any time, we are willing to discuss the military demarcation line and the demilitarized zone based on the current front and the current military reality. We will ignore any efforts made on the military demarcation line." When the DPRK and China Nam Il refuted the other party's theory of "compensation for superiority in the navy and air force" and "theory of defensive positions and troop security" and continued to insist on the 38th Parallel point of view, In order not to speak again, the meeting was silent for 132 minutes from 1:38 p.m. to 3:50 p.m., creating an unprecedented anecdote in the history of negotiations.

In the silence, Joe sometimes rested his chin on his hands, sometimes fiddled with pencils, and constantly took out cigarettes from his pockets to light them; his assistants were either smoking or scribbling on paper with pens.On the North Korean side, Nan Ri stared at Joey with an ivory cigarette holder in his mouth; Deng Hua, Xie Fang, and Zhang Pingshan sat quietly; Li Xiangchao drew with a red pencil with his head bowed.According to Joey’s recollection of the situation at that time: “I noticed that Major General Baek Sun-yeop, who was sitting on my right, was full of anger. The note is written in Korean in red pencil. The handwriting is so large that it can be clearly seen across the table: 'The slaves of imperialism are worse than dogs that eat people!'”

Joey's statement cannot be confirmed.At that time, the DPRK and China were indeed very angry and contemptuous of the U.S. action, but they were both calm and composed. You didn’t speak, and I didn’t speak, just “sit down.”Finally, Joey couldn't sit still, he said: "Do you have any comments to express?" Fang Nanri replied: "I have nothing to say at the moment." Joey continued to speak, and the two sides had a brief dialogue , Joey proposed to adjourn the meeting, and we agreed.The "performance" that the US tried to pressure me with silence was forced to end.

But what is even more absurd is that on August 11, Joey put forward another reason that contradicts his superiority in the navy and air force, that is, the ground forces of the United Nations Army are weak, so they should also be compensated for the determination of the military demarcation line.At the negotiation meeting on August 12, the United States appeared to be even more arrogant and unreasonable. It not only refused to use the 38th parallel as the baseline of the military demarcation line, but also attempted to impose the responsibility for the stalemate in the negotiations on the DPRK and China.

From July 26 to mid-August, it took more than half a month. The negotiating parties were still deadlocked on the issue of determining the military demarcation line. Fierce debates occupied the time of the daily meeting.Outside the venue, a series of incidents were dealt with and another contest on the battlefield followed. Due to the continuous provocations by the US side outside the venue, the armistice negotiations were forced to be suspended on August 22. In the first ten days of September, after Truman's most concerned "peace treaty with Japan" and the "U.S.-Japan Security Treaty" were passed and signed, several "major events" that the United States had to do in the international arena came to an end, especially the summer war initiated by Ridgway. The fact that the offensive lost troops and defeated the generals, coupled with the rising anti-war sentiment in the country, forced the United States to tilt the balance of "tension" as a bargaining chip to the "detente" end, and made a gesture of actively taking responsibility and hoping to renegotiate.

On the morning of October 25, the delegations of the two sides resumed the armistice negotiations at Panmunjom, the new meeting place of the agreement. During this period, both negotiating parties have further studied and prepared the final positions that can be adopted on the military demarcation line.The meeting began on August 17, and was also conducted in the form of a group meeting instead of a general meeting.After the renegotiation, the DPRK and China patiently laid out the facts and reasoned in the discussion of the group meeting, trying to find the "existing contact line" that both sides recognized, and compared the reasonableness of the two sides' proposals with specific figures. On the afternoon of the 31st, a ceasefire on the spot and a slightly adjusted plan to determine the military demarcation line were proposed. "Minor adjustments" are intended to take into account the other party's often-emphasized "defensible defensive positions," and it is a compromise made by the DPRK and China for the overall peace.But the United States has made a big fuss about adjustments.Therefore, on November 7, the DPRK and China proposed an amendment, that is, to use the existing contact line as the military demarcation line, and the two sides each retreat two kilometers to form a demilitarized zone.However, the other party made an unreasonable plan to place Kaesong in the demilitarized zone the next day.The other party's proposition will certainly not be accepted by the DPRK and China.The other party had no choice but to accept the proposal to use the existing contact line as the military demarcation line on November 17, but added a 30-day validity period limit, that is, if an armistice agreement cannot be reached within 30 days, the military division The boundary line is corrected according to the actual line of contact at that time. On the 21st, the DPRK and China proposed amendments at the group meeting. On the 23rd, the subcommittee reached an agreement on the issue of the military demarcation line.The content is that the existing actual contact line between the two sides is the military demarcation line; each side retreats two kilometers from this line to establish a demilitarized zone during the military armistice; if the military armistice agreement is signed after 30 days after the ratification of this agreement, then The above-mentioned military demarcation line and demilitarized zone should be amended according to changes in the actual line of contact between the two sides in the future.

On the day when the agreement in principle was reached, the staff officers of both sides began to proofread the contact line.After three and a half days of point-by-point checking, at 9:30 am on the 27th, the map marking the contact line identified by both sides was submitted to the group meeting for discussion and approval. At 11 o'clock, the delegations of the two sides held the 28th meeting and approved the subcommittee's agreement on the second agenda item and the military demarcation line determined according to the existing contact line. On December 10, the staff officers of both sides delineated the northern and southern edges of the demilitarized zone according to the line of contact.So far, the two sides have achieved the first agreement on substantive issues.