What Is Operation Paul Bunyan

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9 months ago

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In August 1976, North Korean soldiers attacked a group of US and South Korean men trimming a poplar tree in the heavily-guarded zone that divides the two Koreas.

The Story

Two US officers were bludgeoned to death with axes and clubs.

After three days of deliberations going all the way up to the White House, the US decided to respond with a colossal show of force.

Hundreds of men – backed by helicopters, B52 bombers and an aircraft carrier task force – were mobilised to cut back the poplar.

Six of the men who took part told the BBC about their part in the most dramatic gardening job in history.

A small neutral camp called the Joint Security Area (JSA) lies on the border between North and South Korea, in the area known as the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). Both were created under the terms of the armistice signed in 1953 which ended the Korean War.

The JSA – also called Panmunjom, or the Truce Village – is where negotiations between both sides take place. Most recently, it was where US President Donald Trump stepped into North Korea, becoming the first US leader to do so.

But in 1976, guards and soldiers from both sides could wander all around the small zone. North Koreans, South Koreans and US guards would mingle together.

Bill Ferguson was just 18 years old in August 1976. He was part of the US army support group in the JSA, under the command of the popular Captain Arthur Bonifas.

“Capt Bonifas really wanted us to enforce the terms of the armistice,” Mr Ferguson says. “We were encouraged to intimidate the North Koreans into allowing the full freedom of movement within the JSA.”

At the time, US soldiers were only allowed to serve in the JSA if they were over six feet (1.83m) tall, Mr Ferguson says, as part of this intimidation.

“We didn’t get along with them at all,” Mr Ferguson remembers, although he admits that occasionally North Korean guards would trade propaganda from their country for Marlboro cigarettes.

Strict rules limited the number of guards from both sides and the weapons they could carry. Troops from one side would try to antagonise the other, which often led to violence. While Mr Ferguson was there, one US guard had his arm broken by North Koreans after he accidentally drove his jeep behind their main building, the Panmungak pavilion.

US Lieutenant David “Mad Dog” Zilka meanwhile encouraged men to go out on patrol carrying big sticks, to bang on the walls and windows of North Korean barracks and to use as weapons if need be.

“Zilka would take us out on these clandestine patrols,” says Mike Bilbo, a platoon mate and friend of Bill Ferguson’s in the JSA. “Once or twice we caught a North Korean where they weren’t supposed to be and kind of beat him up a little bit – not too bad.”

Mr Bilbo says these aggressive actions on both sides may have prompted the incident over the tree. “But there’s just no cause for them to do what they did.”

The branches of the poplar obscured the view between a checkpoint and an observation post. A team of US and South Korean men were ordered to prune it back.

On the first attempt, North Korea objected, claiming any landscaping work required permission from both parties. Heavy rain thwarted the second try.

Capt Bonifas – in the final days of his deployment in Korea – decided to monitor the third attempt personally, on 18 August.

A group of North Koreans appeared, demanding they stop cutting the branches. When Capt Bonifas ignored them, the North Koreans attacked – using clubs and axes wrenched from the gardening party to bludgeon the captain and US Lieutenant Mark Barrett to death.

How the North Koreans might respond to this force though was another concern.

Wayne Johnson was a 19-year-old US private with the 2nd Battalion 9th Infantry, stationed at Camp Liberty Bell just outside the JSA. He drove his commanding officer to a briefing the night before the tree-cutting operation, and saw a lieutenant ask what would happen to his unit.

“I watched the officer turn around with this piece of chalk and draw an X through our unit designation on the chalk board, then turn back around and say, ‘Any more questions?'” Mr Johnson says.

The teenager was tasked with rigging Camp Liberty Bell with explosives that night to destroy the base in case the North Koreans attacked and tried to capture it. Then he drove up to meet the rest of his unit at the JSA, passing through US and South Korean checkpoints as he went.

“I thought that was kind of funny,” he says. “At the DMZ gates I had to go through a checkpoint there. I’m thinking, what the hell, don’t these guys know that things are going to happen?”

‘We were prepared not to come back’

Bill Ferguson and Mike Bilbo spent the night preparing for their own mission – driving in and securing what is known as the Bridge of No Return to prevent North Korean forces driving into the JSA and interfering with the tree cutting.

The Bridge of No Return in the JSA crosses the Military Demarcation Line between North Korea and South Korea

“A couple of guys got sick – the tension, the nervousness of it,” Mr Bilbo says. “Everybody’s on pins and needles. And when we pulled out from our camp, there’s Cobra helicopters hovering just off the ground getting ready to take off.

“I looked down the road and here is all these as far as I can see truckloads of soldiers. It’s an invasion force of some kind.”

Ted Schaner was a 27-year-old captain with the 2nd Battalion 9th Infantry, and one of the men in the helicopters hovering overhead as the soldiers drove in towards the tree.

“It was an impressive line up there,” he says. They, too, were unsure whether war was about to break out. “We were, of course, hoping it wouldn’t, but I felt… we were prepared if that’s what was going to happen. I was proud of my soldiers.”

Alpha company of the 2nd Battalion 9th Infantry – Wayne Johnson’s company – remained on the ground.

“We were prepared not to come back,” says Joel Brown, then a 19-year-old private with Alpha Company. “It felt kind of surreal… We’ve been here since 1950 and it’s all going to go down over this tree.”

US troops moved into the JSA early in the morning to cover the engineers coming in to cut back the tree

Sirens went off throughout the DMZ and troops were put on high alert. Word of the attack quickly reached Washington DC, where Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called for an attack on the North Korean barracks to ensure “a high probability of getting the people who did this”.

“They have killed two Americans and if we do nothing, they will do it again,” he told a briefing. “We have to do something.”

In the end, Kissinger was overruled. While military and political leaders debated how best to respond, they all agreed on one thing: the tree had to go.

Commanders came up with a plan to prune the tree back using a massive show of force. It was designated Operation Paul Bunyan – named after a giant lumberjack in US folklore – and scheduled for 21 August.

Bill Ferguson and Mike Bilbo’s platoon arrived just as the fog was lifting. Their truck driver reversed onto the Bridge of No Return to block the crossing, while the men jumped out armed only with pistols and axe handles.

“Almost immediately a dump truck comes up, and it’s got engineers in it,” says Mr Bilbo. “I’ve never seen chainsaws so long.”

Charles Twardzicki of the 2nd Engineer Battalion had spent the night practising to use the tools. The 25-year-old sergeant had suggested bringing in heavier equipment to take the tree down, but officers feared it would be too difficult to speedily get them out if the North Koreans tried to intervene – leaving them to cut back the branches by hand.

“We have to use a ladder to get up into the tree,” he says. “We got one guy on the headache board [behind the truck’s cab] cutting one, and I’m cutting another. His chainsaw is about where my head is.”

As the engineers chopped, the troops watched North Korean forces arrive in trucks and buses.

“We can see the North Koreans across from us setting up machine guns,” says Mike Bilbo. “I’m looking around where I’m going to go when the artillery comes in. In fact, all the artillery – ours and theirs – was zeroed in on us.”

US engineers pruned the tree with chainsaws, leaving only the trunk

Several US soldiers remember they and the South Korean special forces who accompanied them had sneaked heavy weapons into the area under sandbags on the floor of their trucks. Some South Koreans even strapped claymore mines to their chests and held the detonators in their hands, goading the North Koreans to attack.

“I understood some of the bad words in Korean and it was a lot of bad words, let me tell you,” says Wayne Johnson, who was standing just yards away from Bill Ferguson and Mike Bilbo during the tree cutting.

But the North Koreans did not intervene. Once the branches were cut down, the US and South Korean forces quickly withdrew from the JSA – although other forces in the DMZ remained on alert. The entire operation was over in less than 45 minutes.

‘A pretty poor trade’

“Everybody was jazzed up,” Mike Bilbo says. “Symbolic things bother the North Koreans more than the actual.”

“One day I went out and sawed a couple pieces of the branch… Everybody’s got a piece of that damned tree,” he says.

Since 2018, North and South Korea have demilitarised the JSA, removing all mines and guard posts

Soldiers felt they had made the North Koreans lose face, something they knew would enrage them. But others remained angry.

“I felt that we got the worst part of it,” says Charles Twardzicki. “We were just trimming the tree and you killed a couple of our officers – so we cut it down… I thought it was a pretty poor trade.”

“We didn’t want to be the ones responsible for starting a whole new war, but we were also dying for the chance to extract some blood,” says Bill Ferguson.

Rules in the JSA changed shortly after Operation Paul Bunyan. North Koreans were separated from UN forces with the small concrete barrier that President Donald Trump stepped over in July – putting an end to the mingling and intimidation tactics.

“That was a major letdown,” Bill Ferguson says. “North Korea was never that fond with that arrangement, it being a neutral area… To me and several others enforcing the line through the JSA, it was basically a capitulation.”

However, a rare expression of regret from then-North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung about the deaths of the US soldiers on the day of the tree cutting made many realise they had sufficiently shocked the country with the vast display of US firepower.

Troops at Camp Liberty Bell and the JSA stayed on high alert after the operation, in case of retaliation. It was weeks before the men could return to their regular routine.

“Nobody had gone down to the [local town] for over a month and I think that some of those bars were about to go bankrupt,” says Wayne Johnson. “It was kind of, okay, business as usual, let’s go back.”

The Korean axe murder incident.

The Korean axe murder incident.( Panmunjom axe murder incident), also known domestically as the Panmunjom axe atrocity incident , was the killing of two United Nations Command officers, Captain Arthur Bonifas and First Lieutenant Mark Barrett, by North Korean soldiers on August 18, 1976, in the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The officers, from the United States Army, had been part of a work party cutting down a poplar tree in the JSA.

Remains of the tree that was the object of the 1976 axe murder incident, as seen in 1984. Deliberately left standing after *Operation Paul Bunyan*, the stump was replaced by a monument in 1987.

North Korean and UNC forces during the 1976 axe attack

Three days later, US and South Korean forces launched Operation Paul Bunyan, an operation that cut down the tree with a show of force to intimidate North Korea into backing down, which it did. North Korea then accepted responsibility for the earlier killings.

The incident is also known alternatively as the hatchet incident, the poplar tree incident, and the tree trimming incident.

Background

OP No. 5 from which the pictures of the axe murder were taken

View from KPA No. 7 (near CP No. 2) towards CP No. 3, January 1976. Also visible in the picture (left to right) are KPA No. 4 across the Bridge of No Return, KPA No. 8 and KPA No. 5 (partially obscured behind the tree). This picture was taken early in the morning, before the North Koreans opened this checkpoint for the day.

The layout of the Joint Security Area in 1976. The Military Demarcation Line was not enforced in the JSA prior to the incident.

In the Joint Security Area, near the Bridge of No Return (through which the Military Demarcation Line runs), a 30-metre (98 ft) poplar tree blocked the line of sight between a United Nations Command (UNC) checkpoint and an observation post.

On one occasion before the incident, North Korean soldiers had held a group of US troops at gunpoint. Joint Security Force (JSF) company commander Captain Arthur Bonifas was then sent to force the North Koreans to stand down and to bring the Americans back to safety, and he did so successfully. Bonifas was later one of the soldiers killed in the axe murders.

Wayne Kirkbride, an officer at the DMZ at the time, recalled hearing that North Korean soldiers had told members of a work force sent to cut the tree that they could not, as it had been planted by their leader, Kim Il Sung.

Initial trimming

On August 18, 1976, a group of five Korean Service Corps (KSC) personnel escorted by a UNC security team consisting of Captain Arthur Bonifas; his South Korean army counterpart, Captain Kim; the platoon leader of the current platoon in the area, First Lieutenant Mark Barrett; and 11 enlisted personnel, both American and South Korean, went into the JSA to prune the tree.

The two captains did not wear sidearms, as members of the Joint Security Area were limited to five armed officers and 30 armed enlisted personnel at a time. However, there were mattocks in the back of the 2 1⁄2-ton truck. The KSC workers had the axes that they had brought to prune the tree branches.

After the pruning began, about 15 North Korean soldiers appeared, commanded by Senior Lieutenant Pak Cheol, whom the UNC soldiers had nicknamed “Lieutenant Bulldog” because of a history of confrontations. Pak and his subordinates appeared to observe the pruning without concern for approximately 15 minutes. Then, Pak abruptly told the UNC to cease the activity and stated that the tree could not be pruned. Captain Bonifas ordered the detail to continue and turned his back on the North Koreans.

After being ignored by Bonifas, Pak sent a runner across the Bridge of No Return. Within minutes, a North Korean guard truck crossed the bridge and approximately 20 more North Korean guards disembarked carrying crowbars and clubs. Pak again demanded that the pruning cease. When Bonifas again turned his back on him, Pak removed his watch, carefully wrapped it in a handkerchief, placed it in his pocket, and shouted, “Kill the bastards!” Using axes dropped by the tree pruners, the Korean People’s Army (KPA) forces attacked both US soldiers, Bonifas and Barrett, and wounded all but one of the UNC guards.

Bonifas was knocked to the ground by Pak and then bludgeoned to death by at least five North Koreans, and Barrett jumped over a low wall that led past a 4.5-metre (15 ft) deep tree-filled depression just across the road from the tree. The depression was not visible from the road because of the dense grass and small trees. The entire fight lasted for only 20 to 30 seconds before the UNC force dispersed the North Korean guards and placed Bonifas’s body in their truck. There was no sign of Barrett, and the two UNC guards at OP No. 5 could not see him.

The UNC force observed the North Korean guards at KPA No. 8 along the UNC emergency egress road exhibiting strange behavior, in that one guard would take an axe and go down into the depression for a couple of minutes and then come back and hand the axe to another guard, who would repeat the action. This went on for approximately 90 minutes until the UNC guards at OP No. 5 were informed that Barrett was missing, when they informed their superiors about the KPA activity in the depression. A search-and-rescue squad was quickly dispatched and found that Barrett had been attacked with the axe by the North Koreans. Barrett was recovered and transported to a hospital in Seoul via an aid station at Camp Greaves; he died on the journey.

Captain Shirron (Bonifas’s replacement), Captain Shaddix, the joint duty officer’s driver, the joint duty officer, and the OP No. 5 guard witnessed the attack from OP No. 5 and recorded the incident with a black-and-white film camera, which ran out of film, and Shaddix’s 35 mm camera with a telephoto lens. The UNC guard at CP No. 3 (Bridge of No Return) recorded the incident with a movie camera.

Reaction

Shortly after the incident, the North Korean media began airing reports of the fight. The North Korean version stated:

Around 10:45 a.m. today, the Americans sent in 14 soldiers with axes into the Joint Security Area to cut down the trees on their own accord, although such a work should be mutually consented beforehand. Four persons from our side went to the spot to warn them not to continue the work without our consent. Against our persuasion, they attacked our guards en masse and committed a serious provocative act of beating our men, wielding murderous weapons and depending on the fact that they outnumbered us. Our guards could not but resort to self-defense measures under the circumstances of this reckless provocation.

Within four hours of the attack, Kim Jong Il, the son of the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, addressed the Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and presented a prepared document describing the incident as an unprovoked attack on North Korean guards that had been led by American officers. He then introduced a resolution asking the conference to condemn that day’s grave US provocation, and he called on participants to endorse both the withdrawal of US forces from South Korea and the dissolution of the UNC, which was seconded by Cuba. The members of the conference passed the resolution.

The CIA considered the attack to have been planned by the North Korean government. A variety of responses were evaluated. Readiness levels for American forces in South Korea were increased to DEFCON 3 early on August 19. Rocket and artillery attacks in the area were considered but discounted because of an unfavorable 4:1 ratio of artillery pieces, and South Korean President Park Chung Hee did not want military action.

Operation Paul Bunyan
Part of Post-armistice Korean conflicts
South Korean soldiers cutting down the tree using a chainsaw
DateAugust 21, 1976LocationJoint Security Area, Korean Demilitarized Zone, Korea
Belligerents
United States South Korea	North Korea
Commanders and leaders
General Richard G. Stilwell	Lieutenant Pak Cheol
Units involved
United States Army Support Group JSF 1st and 2nd Platoon South Korea 1st Special Forces Brigade	Unknown
Strength
813 infantry 27 helicopters 1 tank	150 to 200 infantry
Casualties and losses
2 US Soldiers

In response to the incident, the UNC determined that instead of trimming the branches that obscured visibility, they would cut down the tree with the aid of overwhelming force. The parameters of the operation were decided in the White House, where US President Gerald Ford had held crisis talks. Ford and his advisors were concerned about making a show of strength to chasten North Korea without causing further escalation. The operation, named after the mythical lumberjack of the same name, was conceived as a show of force by the US and South Korea and was carefully managed to prevent further escalation. It was planned over two days by General Richard G. Stilwell and his staff at the UNC headquarters in Seoul.

Forces

Operation Paul Bunyan was carried out on August 21 at 07:00, three days after the killings. A convoy of 23 American and South Korean vehicles (“Task Force Vierra,” named after Lieutenant Colonel Victor S. Vierra, commander of the United States Army Support Group) drove into the JSA without any warning to the North Koreans, who had one observation post staffed at that hour. In the vehicles were two eight-man teams of military engineers (from the 2nd Engineer Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division) equipped with chainsaws to cut down the tree.

The teams were accompanied by two 30-man security platoons from the Joint Security Force, who were armed with pistols and axe handles. The 1st Platoon secured the northern entrance to the JSA via the Bridge of No Return, while the 2nd Platoon secured the southern edge of the area.

Concurrently, a team from B Company, commanded by Captain Walter Seifried, had activated the detonation systems for the charges on Freedom Bridge and had the 165mm main gun of the M728 combat engineer vehicle aimed mid-span to ensure that the bridge would fall if the order was given for its destruction. Also, B Company, supporting E Company (bridge), were building M4T6 rafts on the Imjin River in case the situation required emergency evacuation by that route.

In addition, a 64-man task force of the ROK Army 1st Special Forces Brigade accompanied them, armed with clubs and trained in taekwondo, supposedly without firearms. However, once they parked their trucks near the Bridge of No Return, they started throwing out the sandbags that lined the truck bottoms and handing out M16 rifles and M79 grenade launchers that had been concealed below them. Several of the commandos also had M18 Claymore mines strapped to their chests with the firing mechanism in their hands, and were shouting at the North Koreans to cross the bridge.

A US infantry company in 20 utility helicopters and seven Cobra attack helicopters circled behind them. Behind these helicopters, B-52 Stratofortresses came from Guam escorted by US F-4 Phantom IIs from Kunsan Air Base and South Korean F-5 and F-86 fighters were visible flying across the sky at high altitude. F-4Es from Osan AB and Taegu Air Base, South Korea, F-111 bombers of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing out of Mountain Home Air Force Base, were stationed, and F-4C and F-4D Phantoms from the 18th TFW Kadena Air Base and Clark Air Base were also deployed. The aircraft carrier USS Midway task force had also been moved to a station just offshore.

Near the edges of the DMZ, many more heavily-armed US and South Korean infantry, artillery including the Second Battalion, 71st Air Defense Regiment armed with Improved Hawk missiles, and armor were waiting to back up the special operations team. Bases near the DMZ were prepared for demolition in the case of a military response. The defense condition (DEFCON) was elevated on order of General Stilwell, as was later recounted in Colonel De LaTeur’s research paper. In addition, 12,000 additional troops were ordered to Korea, including 1,800 Marines from Okinawa. During the operation, nuclear-capable strategic bombers circled over the JSA.

Altogether, Task Force Vierra consisted of 813 men: almost all of the men of the United States Army Support Group of which the Joint Security Force was a part, a South Korean reconnaissance company, a South Korean Special Forces company that had infiltrated the river area by the bridge the night before, and members of a reinforced composite rifle company from the 9th Infantry Regiment. In addition to this force, every UNC force in the rest of South Korea was on battle alert.

Operation

The engineers in the convoy (two teams from B Company and C Company, 2nd Engineer Battalion, led by First Lieutenant Patrick Ono, who had conducted a reconnaissance of the tree disguised as a Korean corporal two days earlier) left their vehicles once the convoy arrived and immediately started cutting down the tree while standing on the roof of their truck. The 2nd Platoon truck was positioned to block the Bridge of No Return. The remainder of the task force dispersed to their assigned areas around the tree and assumed their roles of guarding the engineers.

North Korea quickly responded with about 150 to 200 troops, who were armed with machine guns and assault rifles. The North Korean troops arrived mostly in buses but did not leave them at first and watched the events unfold. Upon seeing their arrival, Lieutenant Colonel Vierra relayed a radio communication, and the helicopters and Air Force jets became visible over the horizon. Yokota Air Base in Japan was on alert. The flight-line runway was “nose to tail” with a dozen C-130s ready to provide backup. The North Koreans quickly got out of their buses and began setting up two-man machine gun positions, where they watched in silence as the tree was felled in 42 minutes (three minutes less than Stilwell’s estimate), which avoided a violent confrontation. Two road barriers, installed by the North Koreans, were removed, and the South Korean troops vandalized two North Korean guard posts. The tree stump, around 6 m (20 ft) tall, was deliberately left standing.

Five minutes into the operation, the UNC notified its North Korean counterparts at the JSA that a UN work party had entered the JSA “in order to peacefully finish the work left unfinished” on August 18. The attempt at intimidation was apparently successful, and according to an intelligence analyst monitoring the North Korea tactical radio net, the accumulation of force “blew their fucking minds.”

Aftermath

In response to the incident, anti-North Korean sentiment spiked in South Korea, where South Koreans burn a paper effigy of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in Seoul.

Although the operation was carried out peacefully, there was concern that it could spark a wider conflict. The incident led to increased tensions along the Korean Demilitarized Zone but did not develop into full-scale war. Some shots were fired at the US helicopter that carried Major General Morris Brady. It circled Panmunjom later that day, but no one was injured.

The United Nations Command had demanded that the North Koreans “punish those involved and make adequate reparations to the families of those killed and injured.” Later, on the day of Operation Paul Bunyan, it received a message from Kim Il Sung expressing regret at the incident. The message was relayed by the senior member of the North Korean MAC team (Major General Han Ju-kyong) to the senior UNC MAC member (Rear Admiral Mark Frudden): “It was a good thing that no big incident occurred at Panmunjom for a long period. However, it is regretful that an incident occurred in the Joint Security Area, Panmunjom this time. An effort must be made so that such incidents may not recur in the future. For this purpose both sides should make efforts. We urge your side to prevent the provocation. Our side will never provoke first, but take self-defensive measures only when provocation occurs. This is our consistent stand.” While not going far enough to satisfy a previously-discussed “acceptable” Northern response, the US administration decided to emphasize it as a step in the right direction, as it was the first time since the Korean War armistice in 1953 that the North had accepted responsibility for violence along the DMZ.

The Joint Security Area’s advance camp (Camp Kitty Hawk) was then later renamed “Camp Bonifas” in honor of the slain company commander. The Barrett Readiness Facility, located inside the JSA and housing the battalion’s north mission platoon, was named for Barrett. The site of the tree, the stump of which was cut down in 1987, became the location of a stone monument with a brass plate inscribed in the memory of both men. The UNC has held commemorative ceremonies at the monument on anniversaries.

Tools which were alleged to have been involved in the incident

The nearby UNC checkpoint (CP No. 3, next to the Bridge of No Return), was no longer used after the mid-1980s when concrete-filled bollards were placed in the road to make vehicle passage impossible.

The incident also prompted the separation of personnel from the two sides within the JSA as a way to avoid further incidents.

An axe and an axe handle that were supposedly used in the incident are on display in the North Korea Peace Museum.

General William J. Livsey, who was the commanding general of the Eighth US Army in South Korea from 1984 to 1987, publicly carried a swagger stick that was carved from wood collected from the tree at the center of the incident. The swagger stick was ceremoniously passed on to General Louis C. Menetrey when Livsey retired from his command.

Moon Jae-in, who would later become the 12th president of South Korea, participated in Operation Paul Bunyan as a rear supporting member of the Republic of Korea 1st Special Forces Brigade.

The Context

The murders were a serious provocation, but they came after years of North Korean threats. For instance, less than three years earlier, on December 4, 1973, Kissinger received a memo from W.R. Smyser that North Korea had attempted to restrict American access to islands off the coast of the Korean peninsula. Smyser argued that although the North Koreans did not claim ownership over the islands, they claimed ownership of the waters around them, which allowed them “unprecedented and frequent naval incursions.” U.S. policymakers urged the South Koreans to dispute the claim through their hotline to the North, and approached the Soviets and the Chinese to diffuse the situation. U.S. policymakers decided to continue resupplying the islands as usual and act as a ferry escort service if North Korean threatened the supply ships. The U.S. also stressed that South Korea should not under any circumstances fire the first shot.

When the U.S. conducted reconnaissance missions to detect a possible North Korean buildup, the North Koreans claimed the missions were hostile and the U.S. was attempting to start a war according to a December 5th telegram. This and similar incidents led Ford to order National Security Study Memorandum 226 on May 27, 1975 to better understand the threats emanating from North Korea.

The Incident

Starting in the early spring of 1976, the North Korean government broadcast nearly daily propaganda claiming the U.S. was committing aggression and threatening peace. On August 5th, after a shooting between North and South Korean soldiers in the DMZ, the North Koreans released a memo claiming that the U.S. was introducing new weapons to the Korean peninsula, and was attempting to instigate a war. The WSAG received a report for the August 18, 1976 meeting that assessed that the North Koreans were trying to influence the upcoming American presidential election. They believed that North Korea hoped that American casualties would cause the American public to oppose the continued presence of U.S. troops on the peninsula.

During this tense situation, a small group of U.S. and South Korean troops set out on a simple mission to cut back a tree in the jointly controlled zone. The tree obstructed the view from nearby observation towers. About 15 North Korean soldiers approached and demanded the group stop trimming the tree. When they refused, the North Koreans attacked with crowbars, clubs, and axes. Two U.S. Army officers were killed, and four other U.S. soldiers and four South Korean soldiers were wounded. See, for instance, a memo to William G. Hyland on the WSAG Meeting on Korean Incident on August 18, 1976.

During the August 18th WSAG meeting, Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Clements asked “wasn’t that a routine operation-keeping the area clear?” The answer was yes. The WSAG members judged the North Koreans authorized an attack on any group of Americans or South Koreans who were vulnerable, and the North Korean soldiers likely saw the tree-trimming group as a target of opportunity. Ford tasked the WSAG to think about what would be the best response.

When the WSAG met the next day, they had already decided that U.S. and South Korean forces should cut down the tree entirely. The question was whether they follow a diplomatic route, informing the North Koreans of their plans and potentially inviting international observers, or would they cut the tree without warning, using the maximum number of men to do so and therefore maximize their show of force. The WSAG recommended the latter option. They also sought approval from Ford to conduct a B-52 flyover at the same time the tree was cut down to further demonstrate U.S. military might. Finally, they developed initial plans to move a Naval Task Force in from the Sea of Japan, fly in F-111s from Idaho, and even developed bomb North Korean barracks. See also the Director of Central Intelligence Briefing for the WSAG on August 19, 1976.

The Follow-up

The Americans and the South Koreans swiftly cut down the tree. The North Koreans were scared, and agreed to dismantle two North Korean guard-posts. The plan to bomb the barracks was eventually scuttled, despite having the support of Clements and Kissinger. Kissinger blamed the decision to forgo the barracks strike on Ford’s presidential election speech that Americans would not be in combat anywhere in the world. However, during the August 25, 1976 WSAG meeting, the policymakers continued planning for a response in case further incidents occurred.

The image shows the view from Checkpoint 3 (CP#3) looking south toward Taesong-dong. The flag from Taesong-dong is in the center of the picture. KPA#8 is to the left. The hill behind KPA#8 is (was) Guard Post (GP) Collier. The area to the left of KPA#8 is the depression area where Lt. Mark Barrett’s body was found after the Axe Murder Incident.

This is picture 7 of the fight sequence. UNC personnel are wearing white helmets. The pictures were taken by U.S. Military personnel, but these are scanned in from “Axe-wielding Murder at Panmunjom”. Copied from inside the back page of the booklet “Axe-wielding Murder at Panmunjom”: Published by UN Korean War Allies Association, Inc. C.P.O. Box 936 Seoul, Korea Contents of this publication may be reproduced in part or in entirety with or without credit to the publisher.

Portion of the tree from the infamous axe murder incident .

A sketch by Mike Bilbo in 1976 showing the Bridge of No Return separating North and South Korea, and the tree in the bottom left-hand corner

Resources

en.wikipedia.org, “Operation Paul Bunyan.” By Wikipedia Editors; ns.clementspapers.org, “Briefing Books | Korea Tree Incident.” By Mr. and Mrs. Peter O’Donnell, Jr.; thehindu.com, “Operation Paul Bunyan: When a tree sparked a military standoff.” By Sweta Gupta; bbc.com, “The DMZ ‘gardening job’ that almost sparked a war.” By Toby Luckhurst;