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Prisoner exchange at Panmunjom, 1953
Little Switch and Big Switch ©
As you may recall, the Korean War prisoner exchange was
accomplished in two stages: Little Switch and Big Switch.
The former involved the transfer of wounded and disabled.
Frank Praytor, who was working for the Pacific Stars and
Stripes at the time, took numerous photos of the exchanges,
which we have converted from negatives to prints. We present
some of them here.
Unfortunately, he said, “I cannot distinguish between the
two just looking at the negatives.” So, we present these
never-before-published photos without distinguishing
between the stages.
Praytor gave us a bit of background on the photos.
“Probably the greatest frustration working for Pacific Stars
and Stripes was the heavy-handed censorship imposed by
the Far East Command during the Korean War,” he said.
“Editors in Tokyo became so intimidated and psyched out
that when given the choice between a staff-written news
report and the same report written by one of the wire services,
they printed the latter.
“That gave them an excuse when the FEC censor called
and complained about something in the paper he didn’t
like,” he noted. “The editors could point out the wire service
story was approved before it reached them. To make it easier
on themselves, they’d kill the staff-written story and go
with the wire-services’ [articles] just to avoid the harassment.”
It was the same with photos he took in Korea. As Praytor
explained, “It was so much hassle involved in getting a
news-worthy photo of mine in the paper, they’d either not
use anything, or if there was a wire service photo that had
been passed, they’d use it instead of mine.”
For him, getting his photos developed was difficult. “My
120 and 35mm rolls of film were dutifully developed by the
Japanese gentleman in Tokyo who operated the Stripes
photo lab. He’d trim them and slip them into packaged
sleeves. It was easy for me to go into the lab files and leave
with my photos (Stripes did not furnish my film, I got it from
my dad at home), so I felt no guilt when I took all my negatives
I could find just before I left for the states and discharge.”
We thank Frank Praytor for allowing us to be the first to
publish these photos—and we copyright this material in his
honor.
1, 2 North Korean General Nam Il arriving at the Panmunjom “Peace Pagoda” for a day of negotiations
3 Prisoner exchange at Panmunjom, 1953
4,5 UN truce negotiators meet with the correspondents after a day of negotiations
6 Free at last! Prisoner exchange at Panmunjom, 1953
7 ROK President Sygman Rhee opening presents on his birthday anniversary in 1953 in his palatial mansion
8, 9 Never missing an opportunity to propagandize, the North Koreans collected their former POWs in
ambulances for the return to North Korea. UN forces delivered them to the exchange site by train!
10 General Harrison, head of the U.S. negotiating team, arriving at Panmunjom for another day of peace talks
11 UN Truce Team at “Peace Pagoda,” Panmunjom, 1953.
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November-December 2007
The Graybeards