225. Editorial Note

At a June 21 meeting of the Military Armistice Commission at Panmunjom, General H.L. Litzenberg, Senior U.N. Command Member, made a statement detailing alleged Communist violations of paragraph 13d of the Armistice Agreement and indicating that the U.N. Command would no longer consider itself bound by the limitations imposed by that paragraph “until such time as the relative military [Page 461] balance has been restored and your side, by its actions, has demonstrated its willingness to comply.” General Jung Kook Rok, Senior Member representing the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers, responded by denouncing the statement made by Litzenberg as an attempt “to wreck the Armistice Agreement and turn South Korea into an American base of atomic warfare”. The United Command Report on the 75th meeting of the MAC is enclosed in despatch 128 from Seoul, August 23. (Department of State, Central Files, 795.00/8–2357)

Repeating the rationale that Communist violations of the Armistice Agreement made the suspension of paragraph 13d a necessity, the United States, in its capacity as the Unified Command, reported the action taken in the Military Armistice Commission on June 21 to the U.N. Secretary-General in a special report dated August 9. (U.N. doc. A/3631)