A 9th South Korean POW Returns From North Korea - March 3rd, 2000 - Associated Press - SEOUL, South Korea -

"A South Korean prisoner of war has returned home after nearly half a century of captivity in North Korea, Seoul's main intelligence agency said Friday."

"Suh Byong-ryol, 70, arrived in Seoul from a third country where he had been living in hiding since escaping the hunger-stricken North in December 1998, the National Intelligence Service said. Suh arrived with three North Koreans, including a 65-year-old mother and 38-year-old daughter, it said. The agency said Suh was captured by Chinese troops in 1953, shortly before the three-year Korean War ended in a truce. He had been forced to work in coal mines and on collective farms in North Korea until he fled, it said...."

"...Suh was the ninth South Korean prisoner of war to escape North Korea and return home."

Russian Memoirs - By now, everyone has heard of the document simply titled "Russian Memoirs." Best described as a diary, the memoirs detail information obtained through various sources of American POWs from World War II, Korea and the Cold War transferred to the former Soviet Union.

According to a February 26, 2000 Associated Press article by By Robert Burns "The assertions, while not confirmed, appear to support, and in some important respects strengthen, a case the Pentagon has been building for several years: U.S. servicemen in the 1940s and 1950s were silently swallowed up in the U.S.S.R.'s brutal Gulag system of forced labor, never to be heard from again."

"There has to be something to this,'' said Norman Kass, who helped translate the unpublished personal memoir from Russian and interviewed the author on behalf of the Pentagon agency in charge of prisoner of war and missing personnel affairs.... "

"...The memoir is exceptional because it provides names of individual servicemen. For example, it identifies by name 22 men said to have been held in late 1951 at the Kirovskij mining camp near the Kamenka River in the sub-Arctic pine forests of the Krasnoyarsk region. The memoir's author cites secondhand accounts of area residents seeing the prisoners, ``wearing bare threads and half-frozen, "being led from the Kirovskij camp along a road to an undetermined destination - ``a dead-end...."

"...Kass said that although the events described by the author have not been independently verified, he believes the man is credible... there is no question that he spent many years in the Gulag network of forced labor camps. The man, now in his late 70s, was exiled to Siberia and worked as a permafrost engineer in the early 1950s near the Kirovskij mining camp where the 22 Americans were said to have been held."

"In the translation from Russian, only one of the 22 names can be matched with a missing American servicemen. He is listed in Army casualty records as Chan Jay Park Kim, a Hawaiian of Korean descent. Kim was a private first class in the 24th Infantry Division's 34th Infantry Regiment, captured by North Korean forces on July 8, 1950. On that day, the 34th Infantry collapsed in its defense of the town of Ch'onan south of Seoul, giving the advancing North Korean army entry to most of the rest of southern Korea."

"According to Pentagon records, fellow members of the 34th Infantry who survived captivity in Korea told Army debriefers that once he became a POW, Kim tried to mask his ethnic background by using the name George Leon. It is that name which appears among the 22 on the list from the Soviet labor camp. "

"Army casualty records list Kim as having died in Korea in January 1951, but his body was not recovered.... "

"...Another section of the memoir describes the fate of 10 members of a 12-man crew of a U.S. Air Force B-29 reconnaissance plane, which was shot down by Soviet forces over the Sea of Japan on June 13, 1952. American search and rescue teams recovered no remains from the plane, and in July 1956 the U.S. government appealed to Moscow for information about the crew. The State Department note said an officer believed to have been a member of the crew was seen in October 1953 in a Soviet hospital north of the Siberian port of Magadan. The Soviets replied that no American servicemen were on Soviet territory. "

"The Russian emigre said that in the 1980s he was told by an associate with extensive experience in the far eastern reaches of Siberia that he had learned the names of two of the captured B-29 fliers: ``Bush and Moore.'' The B-29's commander was Maj. Samuel Busch. A crew member was Master Sgt. David L. Moore. The memoir indicates that Busch and Moore were killed - possibly beaten to death - in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk, apparently a short time after their capture. Eight surviving crew members were put in solitary confinement in a prison in Svobodnyi, a city northwest of Khabarovsk near the Chinese border, it said. "

"Charlotte Busch Mitnik, a sister of Samuel Busch, said in an interview that the memoir ``reinforces what I believe'' happened to him and jibes with unconfirmed rumors her family heard shortly after her brother's capture. "

Cohen: U.S. Military To Move Slowly On Vietnam Ties - March 11th, 2000, from Reuters Hong Kong, by Charles Aldinger - "Defense Secretary William Cohen said Friday he looked forward to next week's historic visit to communist Vietnam, but cautioned that the two militaries would move slowly in establishing ties."

"We will take it step-by-step and not try to rush the process," said Cohen, who Monday and Tuesday will become the first U.S. defense secretary to visit Vietnam since the Vietnam War ended 25 years ago. "I think this is an important step at this level, to have a visit by the secretary of defense," he told reporters traveling with him on a trip to Asia."

"But he said the military-to-military relationship should not "rush precipitously into something that is unrealistic." Cohen will go from Hong Kong to Hanoi Monday and then to Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, Tuesday in what he called a symbolic visit as Hanoi celebrates a quarter century after the 1975 fall of the U.S. backed government of South Vietnam, that marked the communist victory in a war that took the lives of 58,153 American military personnel. Around 2,000 are still listed as missing, two-thirds of them in Vietnam."

"I think there is certainly some symbolism involved. This may be the beginning of a new relationship. Vietnam itself has indicated it wants to be more integrated in the world community," Cohen said. In Hanoi, the secretary will meet Communist Party General Secretary Le Kha Phieu and other officials."

"Cohen said that while the visit will concentrate on increasing joint searches in Vietnam for the remains of missing U.S. servicemen...."

Those Who Do Not Learn From Past Mistakes Are Doomed To Repeat Them -- With this in mind, we offer the following comment, in hopes that future U.S. Negotiators, in dealing with Hanoi, will not repeat the monumental mistakes of past negotiations.

First read "How Communist Negotiate," - which states, in part, "Among men who adhere to logic, an agenda is understood to be only a list of topics to be discussed, concerning which agreed conclusions are later required. For example, Americans meeting to discuss arrangement for a baseball game might adopt an agenda as follows:

Thus, the communists seek to place their negotiating opponents on the defensive from the outset. If their rigged agenda is carelessly accepted by their opponents, the Communists are able to argue that the only questions remaining are: exactly where in Shanghai the ball game is to be played, exactly what time at night the game is to start and precisely which Chinese are to officiate."

Special Assistant to Ambassador Harriman, Chester Cooper, described negotiations with the Vietnamese this way, "There are more pleasant ways of spending an afternoon then negotiating with the North Vietnamese. You say to them, we want to play baseball, and they say, all right, let's play baseball. You say, nine men on a side? Okay, nine men on a side. Nine innings in the game? Fine, they agree, nine innings in a game. Only by the time you finish, there are six men on each team and you're playing hockey." Mr. Cooper made this comment in 1968.

Nothing Has Changed In Communist Vietnam - Stalled Vietnam/US Trade Pact May Lapse, From Reuters March 9th, by By Dean Yates - "A stalled trade pact between Vietnam and the United States might need to be completely renegotiated if the current deal is not approved this year, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam said on Thursday. Ambassador Pete Peterson said Washington was not putting a deadline on formally inking a pact that was agreed in principle last July, but said time was running out for both sides to sign the deal and have it approved by the U.S. Congress. The United States was ready to sign the landmark agreement anytime, Peterson said in an interview. Vietnam's government has hesitated, saying it wants more talks with Washington."

"Even if we signed it today I'm not absolutely certain that we'd get it (approved by Congress) this year," Peterson said, referring to a tight Congressional calendar because of the U.S. presidential election later in 2000. "The other reality is that if (the Congressional approval process) goes beyond this year it's not likely that it's this trade agreement that we would be willing to sign."

"It's more likely that we would in fact go back and renegotiate the entire agreement at some point. It took us three years to do this one, I would suggest it would take some time to complete a second one," he said, adding the current document might simply become out of date. Sending the long-awaited trade deal back to the drawing board would be a public relations disaster for Vietnam, which has faced sustained criticism in recent years over the difficulty and cost of doing business in the country... "

"...Peterson also noted that a reasonable time period between initialing and formal closure of deals such as trade agreements would be around three months. "In this case it shows, or suggests, that initialed documents or MoUs (sic) of whatever that are signed by Vietnam may not be so valid. It raises the question of whether the intent is really there," he said.

A study published in June 1975, titled "Negotiating with the North Vietnamese: A Military Perspective" details how the U.S. was maneuvered by the North Vietnamese both in the Paris Talks and subsequent negotiations during the life of the Four Party Joint Military Team (FPJMT).

It was on two occasions during the early meetings of the FPJMT, that the U.S. "asked PRG to provide information on a specific MIA when (sic) intelligence sources reported as still being held captive."

We know John McDonnell was still held captive but our information indicates that the U.S. delegation was inquiring about another POW. That puts two POWs alive in captivity after Operation Homecoming.

During the life of the FPJMT no information was ever provided by either the North vietnamese or the Viet Cong on American POW/MIAs.

According to the study "The most significant weakness of the USDEL, (U.S. Delegation) however, was not one of tactics and strategy, but rather a matter of US Government priorities. Which was more important, return of the DIC's (Died in Captivity) and a full accounting of the MIA's or continued US support of the RVN (Republic of Vietnam Government? The answer, of course, was continued US support. For the USDEL to accomplish its mission, concessions would have had to be made which would have increased the SRV's chances of a victory in South Vietnam. The US Government was not willing to make those concessions."

The study's abstract states it much more clearly. "The thesis concludes with an observation that the US Delegation was unable to fully accomplish its mission primarily because continued US support of the RVN Government was of higher priority than recovering America's dead and missing."

Vietnam Celebrates -- Extended plans are under way to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of North Vietnam's victory over the American's. Well, at least that's the way Vietnam sees it. According to an March 9th Associated Press article by Paul Alexander "The central highlands town of Buon Ma Thuot geared up today for its biggest event in a quarter-century with a dress rehearsal for a rare military parade to mark its place in history..."

"...Communist forces took lightly defended Buon Ma Thuot in just a few hours on March 10, 1975, the first major victory in a final push that surprised even them with its efficiency and speed. In just over seven weeks, they would capture Saigon, the capital of U.S.-backed South Vietnam, and reunite the divided country, ending a bloody conflict that killed 58,000 American troops and 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians."

"The large scale of events in Buon Ma Thuot shows the importance that the government is placing on commemorations for a war that it often says it wants to put into the past. But it remains clear that Vietnam, while not seeking a formal apology from the United States or other countries that fought against the communists, would welcome aid, investment or reparations...."

"...Leading up to the parade Friday that also will include groups of farmers, youths and women, Buon Ma Thuot has made the traditional slaughter of a water buffalo. The military parade will be a rare occurrence in Vietnam. The biggest in recent memory was for the 20th anniversary of the capture of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City."

"Next up on the list of historical dates is the fall of the imperial capital of Hue on March 26, followed by the capture of Danang, Vietnam's third-largest city, three days later. The military's normally low profile will be particularly high next week when William Cohen makes the first visit by a U.S. defense secretary since the end of the war."

A Good Question - A recent e-mail raised the question, why is Secretary of Defense Cohen visiting Vietnam during the Vietnamese celebrations of their "victory?" Doesn't a visit by Secretary of Defense Cohen, during this "celebration period" legitimize Communist Vietnam's "victory."

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