Word: sunchon
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Last week South Korean army forces retook the southern cities of Sunchon and Yosu, seized in a Communist uprising the week before (TIME, Nov. 1). TIME Correspondent Carl Mydans accompanied government assault troops. His report...
...pretty little valley of Sunchon ("Peaceful Heaven") rests neatly at the bottom of the rugged Chiri Mountains, twelve miles north of the port of Yosu. On the morning of Oct. 20, Sunchon's farmers were harvesting their rice, when they heard a siren and the rattle of small arms from the railroad station. They looked up to see 2,000 rebel soldiers and 400 civilians swarming off a train from Yosu...
...rebels approached Sunchon city peacefully; but as soon as they entered the city, police opened fire. Joined by a company of soldiers guarding the city bridge, the rebels fired back. After a short, sharp battle they were in full control. The hundred or so cops who surrendered were lined up against the wall of the police compound and riddled. Then the rebels, joined by part of the citizenry, paraded through the city under North Korea's Communist banner, singing "Ten thousand years to the North Korean People's Republic...
...Lieuts. Stewart M. Greenbaum and Gordon Mohr, Army observers in Sunchon, narrowly escaped death. The rebel sergeant assigned to kill them was an old friend, who had drunk beer with them in their billet many times. He took the two officers into a field, fired into the ground and then led them to the Presbyterian Mission of Dr. John Curtis Crane, who was barricaded in with his wife and four other missionaries...
Brigadier General Song Ho's loyal troops quickly drove the rebels out of Sunchon, and chased them back into the rough, hilly country to the south. It was hard to tell friend from foe. Both loyal and rebel troops wore U.S. uniforms and carried U.S. weapons. Loyal troops finally put on white armbands. Said young Lieut. Colonel Kang Yung Noon: "What sadness that we had to fire our first bullets against our own brothers...