Kind regards,

Jenny

I am a former member of the JSA as well. I was there during the timeframes depicted.

A 5 minute talk is vastly too short to even begin to explain the JSA, it’s history, etc. in sufficient detail to inform others exactly what it is like.

About two months before I arrived there, the North Koreans attacked an unurmed American Major (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Henderson_Incident) resulting in serious injuries.

While I was there, which was still a neutral area at the time, allowing both sides full access to each side inside the JSA, we felt fairly safe as long the North Koreans (KPA) never outnumbered us by more than 3:1. Once that critical level happened, then we would get real tense as we knew something was probably going to happen. We couldn’t really counter it either, as unlike the KPA, we adhered to the armistice agreement and kept our numbers inside the JSA limited to 30 armed enlisted men and 5 armed officers.

Anyway, much more information is available on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Security_Area and the resulting links embedded in the page). As far as Operation Paul Bunyan itself goes, the reason there was so much military ’stuff’, was to send a message to the KPA. The area was literally a tinderbox, ready to explode. Capt. Bonifas only had less than a week left in country before going home. Lt. Barrett had been in country less than weeks, and had recently gotten married before going overseas.

In the Korean mindset at the time, if you’re bigger, you’re better. This partially explains all of the things like flag sizes, the sizes of the buildings there at the JSA, etc. It also was one of the criteria for any US soldier who volunteered to work there. We all had to be over 6 feet tall as the KPA still haven’t been that successful in creating a tall soldier. So, with the extreme show of force, we not only sent a clear message that we had more (and were therefore bigger) military hardware ready to pound them, but that we took the axe-murder incident very seriously.

Since those were two of our own officers, murdered in cold blood in a supposedly neutral area, for most of us in the JSA, we felt our response was insufficient, but having worked there and knowing the attitudes and philosophy, we accepted it.

A smaller military presence probably would led to gunfire, and therefore hostilities definately would have broken out.

Anyway, thanks for your time. I hope this and the wikipedia articles help explain some of the history and intricacy. Please forgive any typos, but this box has been scrolling for quite a while now, and it makes it more difficult to see what I’ve written. BTW, I contributed heavily to the wikipedia articles, to help polish them up and/or get them started.

(my first attempt to save this appeared to have hung, so here it goes again)

Clearly, there is always more to learn and be aware of – something that Ignite events aim to target. However, as the talks are only five minutes long, perhaps some crucial information was excluded.

Given your direct experience, it would be great if you could use the comment space to fill in any information you feel was overlooked in Alby’s talk so myself and Witch Tech fellow readers can move forward, more informed about ‘Operation Paul Bunyan’ and its significance.

Please let me know what your thoughts are.

I spent a year in the JSA, arriving 18 months after the operation. The tensions were still high and remain so today.

Being a geek is no excuse for ignorance.