DMZ Flashpoints: The 1976 DMZ Axe Murder Incident (Korea)

[TomSea]

DMZ Flashpoints: The 1976 DMZ Axe Murder Incident
GIKorea
August 21, 2005

29 years ago today, Operation Paul Bunyan was launched in response to the brutal axe murders of two US Army officers stationed on the Korean demilitarized zone at Panmunjom.

The two officers, CPT Arthur Bonifas commander of the security company at the JSA and his executive officer 1LT Mark Barrett on August 18, 1976 led a 5 man Korean Service Corps detail along with a six UNC soldier guard force to trim a tree that was obscuring the view of a guard shack located at the Bridge of No Return.

Here is an account of the incident from the book Hazardous Duty:

    At 10:30 that morning, the KSC workers set up two ladders and started pruning branches. Five minutes later, a North Korean truck rolled up and disgorged two North Korean officers and nine enlisted men. The senior Communist officer was First Lieutenant Pak Chol, a veteran JSA guard known to have provoked scuffles with UNC personnel in the past. He asked Captain Kim what work was in progress and was told that the KSC team was only pruning branches. Lieutenant Pak muttered, “That is good.”

    In their normally officious manner, the North Koreans began to coach the South Korean workers on the proper method of branch pruning. This was an obvious attempt to usurp the authority of the American officers, so Captain Bonifas told the men to simply get on with their work. Twenty minutes passed, and then, for no reason, Lieutenant Pak marched up to Captain Bonifas and ordered him to halt the trimming.

Read more at: http://www.rokdrop.net/2005/08/remembering-operation-paul-bunyan/

More:

Korean axe murder incident

The Korean axe murder incident (Korean: 판문점 도끼살인사건; Hanja: 板門店도끼殺人事件,도끼蠻行事件; literally, Panmunjom axe murder incident) was the killing of two United States Army officers, CPT Arthur Bonifas and 1LT Mark Barrett, by North Korean soldiers on August 18, 1976, in the Joint Security Area (JSA) located in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The U.S. Army officers had been part of a work party cutting down a poplar tree in the JSA.

Three days later, American 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.

One of the South Korean soldiers who participated in Operation Paul Bunyan, Moon Jae-in, was elected President of South Korea in 2017.

Read more at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_axe_murder_incident

President Moon Jae-In of South Korea:



I couldn't help but be impressed with this a bit, this is the current President that allegedly, Trump has said negative remarks about. I never would have imagine this.  ( TBR thread and [url=http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2019/08/356_273906.html] Korea Times article )

And the axe murder in the DMZ? That's just a horror that that could happen. Does it ring a bell with anyone?  Atrocious.  A lot of reading on this.

Another article on this incident from the rokdrop website:

Tag: Mark Barrett
Memories from the 1976 DMZ Axe Murder Incident & Operation Paul Bunyan
GIKorea | November 23, 2016

For those that have about a half hour it is well worth reading the entire recollections of a 13-month tour of duty in the 1975-1976 timeframe by Specialist William Ferguson in the Korean JSA.  Something I learned from reading the recollections was how brutal the death of 1st Lieutenant Mark Barrett was during the DMZ Axe Murder Incident:


First Lieutenant Mark Barrett

Nobody knows what happened to Lt. Barrett, he’s nowhere to be seen (Later, after all the pictures are developed, he’s seen jumping over a retaining wall and heading down into the depression area between CP#3 and KPA#8).  As people are climbing into the back of the deuce, and getting Capt. Bonifas’ body loaded up as well, several KPA guards try to grab them and pull them back out. Several guys beat some of them back with axe handles. Another KPA guard tries to climb into the deuce as well. One GI picks up a fire extinguisher, fires it into the KPA guards face, and when it’s empty, he picks it up over his head and throws it right at the KPA guard, catching him square in the forehead and snapping his head back. Finally, after every visible friendly is accounted for, both deuces (the one that carried the KSC workers and their security force, and the one that stayed with the regular CP#3 guards) leave the area and regroup. Lt. Barrett is missing, nobody can see him anywhere, and the guys who are up at OP#5 who first reported and filmed everything, have no idea where he’s at either.  They say that after our personnel left, the Joe’s drag around 5 KPA bodies across the Bridge by picking up their heels (which they probably wouldn’t do if they were alive).  Several other limp bodies are loaded into the KPA guard trucks, extent of injuries unknown. They stay on heightened alert for all KPA activity and for any sign of Lt. Barrett. They notice that the KPA guards at KPA#8 are taking turns going down into the depression between their checkpoint and CP#3. They stay a few minutes, come back up, and hand the axe to another guard, who then goes down into the depression. They say that after about an hour or so of this, they become just to suspicious and a jeep full of JSA personnel heads out to investigate. They head down into the depression and find what’s left of Lt. Barrett, though somehow he’s still alive. He’s immediately removed and medi-vac’d, but dies enroute.

More: https://www.rokdrop.net/tag/mark-barrett/

Brutal. The website, which looks like it is a bit old school per graphics, uses too small of a font I think, I have to squint a bit.

The Atlantic has an article on this:  https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/axe-murder-north-korea-1976/562028/

Okay, this explains it:


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There are some pictures of what occurred because everything was caught on film in the DMZ per the video.