Prisoner Of War Camps

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Tragedy is bound to occur in any conflict and in some cases the detrimental effects become everlasting on the victims who fall to it. Yet sometimes a tragedy or unfortunate event will result in positive outcomes which surprise those victims. Ever present in the last 200 years, prisoner of war camps have been used as sites to contain enemy combatants throughout all theatres of war. The Korean War, spanning from 1950-1953, was a war initially fought between the two nations of South Korea and North Korea over the disagreement between which government had legitimate authority over all the land. The United Nations, especially the United States of America, became a driving force to help the South Koreans, while communist North Korea was assisted and defended by China and the Soviet Union. Both sides had many POW camps that were built as the war progressed, and the analysis of the treatment of prisoners in each sect of camps was astonishing. Howard Levie, a legal expert on the law of war stated, “The world was warranted in anticipation that the treatment of prisoners of war in that armed conflict would be exemplary…Unfortunately such was not the case.”1 One camp in particular, known as Koje-Do, held both communist and anti-communist POWs within the walls of its camp, while other camps, such as Death Valley housed United Nation prisoners. The communists during the Korean War shrewdly handled the prisoner of war situation, while the United States upheld the standard of living for prisoners and maintained the standard of the Geneva Convention.
The treatment of prisoners in the Korean War was supposed to be maintained by a standard known as The Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War in 1929. The article was signed and passed on July 27, 1929 to essentially have a guide and rule-based system for the quality of life for prisoners who may be captured in conflict. Then, many years later The Geneva Convention was surpassed and the Third Geneva Convention was created in 1949, right before the commencement of the Korean War. The new document produced a valuable law allowing us to see documentation on how those in captivity truly lived. It principally stated that all prisoner of war camps were required to open their camps to an accredited representative sent from a neutral power. These representatives would inspect the camps and ensure that the camps were being run under the guidance of the Geneva Convention. In the following research, most of the accounts within the camp were taken by Swiss delegate Frederick Bieri.2
As mentioned before, Koje-Do was a United Nation’s prison camp located on an island off the southern coast of Korea that held communist and anti-communist soldiers who were fighting for either China or North Korea. Geographically, the island was the second largest island in Korea and was roughly 30 miles from Pusan. To better understand how large and prominent the camp was, at the beginning of 1951 the camp had already acquired 50,000 prisoners.3 By the time that all the facilities were finished nearly 150,000 POWs were bounded within the four different enclosures. The camp reached an all-time high when Koje-Do housed 170,000 communist and anti-communist POWs from Korea and China in 1952. At Koje-Do about 21,000 POWs were Chinese, 100,000 North Korean, and a large 49,000 were from South Korea. Of the 49,000 South Koreans, most were taken captive by the KPA (Korean People’s Army) and the United Nations stated that the communist forces should not to expect most of their citizens back. This group of South Korean POWs was held in separate compounds and an impressive 38,000 were released as citizens leaving 132,000 total. As the year 1952 came to a close, Americans warned the Koreans that of the 132,000 POWs it was thought roughly 160,000 would accept repatriation.4 Repatriation meant that the prisoners would return to their origin of citizenship. Originally the POWs were separated by country, but they
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