09-151.pdf

woman who sold eggs in the village. She hid the message in her socks
and delivered the message to the police about 6.5 kilometres away.
When South Korean army and police units soon arrived at the village,
a gun battle broke out and three commandos were killed. Two
commandos were apprehended and provided data about the infiltration
methods. A large number of young officers from their unit had
received special insurgency training in techniques of ambush, night
raids and T’aekwôndo for around three months before being dispatched.
The commandos were all members of the 124th Army Unit
belonging to the Reconnaissance Bureau of the North Korean Ministry
of People’s Armed Forces, the same unit that had provided the men
who had attempted to assassinate President Park Chung Hee. 123
The UNC/MAC requested the 282nd MAC meeting held on
December 10. At the beginning of the meeting, the South charged the
North with having conducted the “most serious violations of the
armistice agreement” by infiltrating commandos into the Ûlchin-
Samch’ôk area “to murder, torture, and kidnap in a ‘suicidal’ attempt
to coerce South Korean citizens to support North Korean communism.”
Of 120 commandos, 107 were killed or committed suicide and seven
were apprehended. Casualties were also high for the South: 47 South
Korean soldiers and 23 civilians were killed. No other incident recorded
in this chapter caused as many casualties.
The UNC/MAC described the subversion, terrorism, kidnapping,
theft and murder that the North Korean commandos had com-
123_ Downs, op. cit., pp. 141-2; Lee, op. cit., 2001(b), p. 80: op. cit., 2004, pp. 40-41;
Mueller-Lhotska, op. cit., p. 54; Sergel, Månadsrapport för december 1968 (n.p.,
December 31, 1968), p. 6; Yi, op. cit., 2003, pp. 128-9. Original quotation marks
from Lee, ibid., 2004, pp. 40-41.
150 Peace-keeping in the Korean Peninsula