Word: yonchon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Just after dawn last Thursday morning, four bullets whistled across the Demilitarized Zone from North Korean positions near the town of Yonchon, 35 miles north of Seoul. Three of the rounds struck the concrete wall of a South Korean guard post; the fourth was found nearby. South Korean soldiers replied a minute later with K3 machine guns, firing 17 rounds back across the DMZ. It was the first exchange of fire since late 2001 by forces that have remained technically at war since 1953. It was also the latest sign of a deepening crisis on the Korean peninsula...
...sharpest fight of the week was fought for possession of a hill mass near Yonchon, from which the guardian searchlights at Panmunjom could be seen at night. The high ground which a U.S. unit held controlled wide reaches of surrounding lowland, and was essential to any attack along the Yonchon route. By week's end, correspondents were calling it "Little Gibraltar" or "Armistice Ridge." Apparently the Chinese wanted it inside their lines before the negotiators at Panmunjom finished plotting the line of contact...
Kumsong, the Reds' central-front bastion, and beyond Yonchon, about 35 miles to the west. On the Yonchon sector, the battered but indomitable U.S.1st Cavalry Division had been trying, against savage enemy resistance, to push the Reds out of hills from which they could fire on the rail line from Seoul to Chorwon, the allied-held west corner of the old Red Iron Triangle. Last week, as the ist Cavalry's men waded in with bayonets and grenades, enemy resistance suddenly collapsed as the beaten Chinese Communists pulled out to the north. The G.I.s moved into the enemy...
While peace talks were but a sporadic, long-distance mumble, the guns spoke sharply again. Allied artillery began pounding the enemy lines along a 40-mile front west of Kumhwa, through Chorwon, Yonchon, Korangpo, to within a few miles of Kaesong. At the same time, allied naval units bombarded east and west coasts of North Korea, and carrier-based aircraft and bombers from bases in Japan and Okinawa began tearing up enemy supply lines. Next day allied troops attacked all along the line. By nightfall 100,000 men of nine allied nations were in combat...
...that the Reds had planned a winter-long stopover. In addition to jerking the enemy out of his prepared winter positions, the offensive had helped strengthen the allied winter line by pushing the enemy back out of reach of the railroad which runs down from Kumhwa through Chorwon and Yonchon to Seoul. What had seemed at first to be an all-out offensive had turned out to be a limited tactical offensive. "Splendid," said tough-talking General Van Fleet. "We have broken up their potential so they cannot surprise...