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3/14/54: Reel 1, Track 1 - Page 1 MR. ACHESON: We are starting off with the subject of Korea, picking that up where we left it a month ago. At that time, we had brought it up to April with the recall of General MacArthur and the stabilization of the military front in Korea. From April until June, when a new phase opened with Mr. Malik's speech, the main other developments which took place were very heavy fighting in what was called the "iron triangle" with extremely heavy Chinese losses. The result of the fighting, as I think perhaps we mentioned last month, was that in May the 38th parallel was again crossed--not very far-and a front, a fairly stable front, was established pretty generally north of the 38th parallel except in the westem part--it di pped south of that because it left out the Inchon peninsula. On the 18th of May the United Nations finally voted the embargo against strategic imports from China; and somewhere along in is this period there were discussions between t he Department of State and US GOVE the Defense Department and the Commander-in-Chief in Korea about what shoud be the course of the campaign. And my recollection is that for military reasons, and sound military reasons, it was decided that there was very little, if any, profit in trying to go much further north than the line was at that time. All the old considerations were again valid-- that as we went north we shortened the enemy's communications, brought in his jet air, tenuated our communications, got out of touch with our air fields, so that the bál ance of military advantage shifted away from us to the en emy by moving north, and that therefore the idea was to stay about where we were with occasional tactical prodding of the enemy to bring on attacks and then punish the enemy very heavily. DR. OPPENHEIMER: With very active patrol all the time, I think, where groups would go out and field all sizes. MR. ACHESON: There was very active patrolling. And sometimes-I don't know whether it went on as late as June--but there were extremely heavy Chinese