Panmunjom

Wow.

They, they, uh, they prepared for anything, like helipad or a route for Panmunjom like that.

Ah.

So nobody really knew what would happen.

I think that has a psychological, um, effect on people like us ob- observing them because we are like, "Oh, we thought that they are just boring, you know, rigid individuals," but they are able to [laughs] do things that we otherwise would not have imagined them to do.

Back in 2018 when I was watching the first summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un i- at the Panmunjom, the DMZ, the demilitarized zone in, in, uh, in Korea in 2017, I did not quite imagine Kim Jong-un to be like that as I watched him for the first time, um, on camera, streamed live on the South Korean news channel on YouTube.

So that was when I was very much fascinated by this idea of summit and leaders face to face because I know I'm not part of the conversation between Moon and Kim, and yet just seeing Kim Jong-un for the first time, you know, saying hello, shaking hands, smiling, having his wife, you know, meet Moon Jae-in's wife, et cetera.

I was like, "Oh, wow, turns out he is, he's actually pretty human." Um, and I say this humanizes a lot of the leaders, not in, not always in the positive sense of humanizing them, but this idea that before Kim Jong-un came onto the international stage of diplomacy in 2017, you know, years ago he had executed his own uncle.

[upbeat music] Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray, South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio, Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television, North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.

[upbeat music] Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom, Brando, The King and I and The Catcher in the Rye, Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye.

We didn't start the fire.

It was always burning since the world's been turning.

Renewed talks, diminished fighting, the second Korean winter, November 1951 through April 1952.

On 25 October, UN and communist negotiators reconvened the truce talks at a new location, a collection of tents in the tiny village of Panmunjom, six miles east of Kaesong.

After some sparring, the communists dropped their demand for a return to the thirty-eighth parallel and accepted the UN position that the ceasefire line be drawn along the current line of contact.

In exchange, the UN bowed to communist demands that a truce line be agreed upon prior to the resolution of other outstanding issues.

Not to do so, Collins maintained, would trigger a rancorous public debate over the Guard's role and fuel allegations that the Army did not trust its own mobilization training system.

Fortunately, the changeover went smoothly, and soon the two new divisions, which largely consisted of draftees led by a cadre of National Guardsmen, were performing just as well as the regular units they had replaced, units that by this time in the war likewise contained large numbers of replacements and draftees.

While the Army realigned its order of battle, the Panmunjom negotiators struggled to finalize the truce agreement in time to meet the 30-day deadline.

When they failed in this, they agreed to extend the deadline by an additional two weeks, but this deadline also came and went without noticeable progress.

This

is Panmunjom, which is the DMZ.

This is from North Korea.

It's the only country where I'm a size large.

November 1951 through April 1952.

On 25 October, UN and Communist negotiators reconvened the truce talks at a new location, a collection of tents in the tiny village of Panmunjom, six miles east of Kaesong.

After some sparring, the communists dropped their demand for a return to the 38th parallel and accepted the UN position that the ceasefire line be drawn along the current line of contact.

In exchange, the UN bowed to communist demands that a truce line be agreed upon prior to the resolution of other outstanding issues.

Not to do so, Collins maintained, would trigger a rancorous public debate over the Guard's role and fuel allegations that the Army did not trust its own mobilization training system.

Fortunately, the changeover went smoothly, and soon the two new divisions, which largely consisted of draftees led by a cadre of National Guardsmen, were performing just as well as the regular units they had replaced, units that by this time in the war likewise contained large numbers of replacements and draftees.

While the Army realigned its order of battle, the Panmunjom negotiators struggled to finalize the truce agreement in time to meet the 30-day deadline.

When they failed in this, they agreed to extend the deadline by an additional two weeks, but this deadline also came and went without noticeable progress.

North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom.

Brando, The King and I and The Catcher in the Rye.

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen.

[laughs]

Panmunjom, John D. Dingell, the Catcher in the Rye, Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye.

We didn't start the fire.

Yep.