Women Warriors 2

     In 1948, even before the outbreak of the Korean War in June of 1950, North Korea launched a guerrilla warfare campaign against the south.  Kim Il Sung sent 5,000 guerrillas into the south to start an insurgency campaign.  These guerrillas were just about all veterans of the Chinese Civil War, having fought as guerrillas against the Nationalist forces for several years.  They were, in other words, very experienced.  Some of the older leadership was actually made up of former Korean Freedom Fighters against the Japanese, who escaped to China and joined up with the Chinese communists.  Within this guerrilla force were a number of women.  Mao had always used female fighters because he needed all the fighters that he could get, so, many young communist Korean women who fled to China to escape the Japanese, joined up with Mao's communist forces.
     The "palchisan," as they were called, a Korean pronunciation of partizan, a Russian name for guerrilla, though fierce fighters, did not experience the success that Kim Il Sung and the Soviets envisioned.  The main reason being, they did not have the support of the people in the countryside.  A guerrilla cannot survive without the support of the people, it is as simple as that.  They were all from the north and the southerners did not accept them.  Many believe that the Soviets and Kim Il Sung were certain that the guerrillas alone could take over the south, but having failed, the north launched an invasion of the south in June of 1950. 
     Many of the "palchisan" were killed and some went into hiding or escaped back to the north.  When the North Korean army came into the south, the guerrillas reemerged, and many women were seen among them. They were feared even more than the uniformed soldiers for they seem to have their own rules and regulations and were not answerable to the uniformed army.
     The U.S. took note of that, realized that the guerrillas would have been very much more successful had they been able to mix-in with the southern population, that what kept them from success was their inability to gain support of the people.  There were people in the U.S. Army, particularly those who had been exposed to the work of the OSS during World War Two, who felt that an unconventional force was needed in Korea.  However, General McArthur, who was the Supreme Commander of UN Forces in Korea at the time refused to have anything to do with any unconventional force.  During WWII, McArthur's area of operation (AO) was the only place where OSS did not operate.  McArthur did not want any special operations in his AO.  There were the Army Alamo Scouts that were created to provide intelligence gathering ability, but they were created almost secretly, without McArthur's knowledge.  But once McArthur was removed in April of 1951 and General Ridgeway appointed Commander, the 8th Army went full speed creating an unconventional force called the United Nations Partisan Infantry in Korea, the UNPIK.  The force was made up of north Korean volunteers, recruited from the ranks of defectors.  They were trained and led initially by WWII veterans of OSS and Rangers.  Later, the newly minted members of the brand new US Army Special Forces out of Ft. Bragg were used as cadre.  The UNPIK was successful, however, it did run into problems dealing with our own other units and their officers who viewed them with suspicion and mistrust.
     At the same time, the fledging Central Intelligence Agency which had been in existence for three years, since 1947, started a program that was euphemistically called the Korean Liaison Officer program.  The CIA, with the help of its Korean employees, recruited and trained agents to be parachuted into North Korea to gather intelligence information.  Sounds simple enough, but there was a problem.
     Korea is a small country, yet, there are distinct dialectical differences from one region to another.  A mere distance of 50 miles would bring about a different speech pattern and word usage.  This was due to the fact that the population was not mobile and under Japanese rule for a half a century, travel was restricted.  Besides, most people could not afford to travel, and people tended to stay close to home all their lives.  The transportation system was not very good and the people were poor.  Unlike in America, where generally speaking, people within several hundred mile radius would speak more or less the same way, that was not the case in Korea back in those days!  An American, even well versed in Korean language, would have a hard time distinguishing the subtleties of accents and intonations used from one region of Korea to another.  So, although the KLO agents were supposed to be all from the north, many who were from the south were recruited.
     During wartime job opportunities are not exactly abundant.  Women in particular found it very hard to earn a living, trying to survive.  Most employment offered to women were menial or unacceptable, like prostitution.  The KLO program offered a very lucrative pay, an amount that would be very hard to earn in any conventional manner.  So, naturally many young women volunteered for the KLO jobs.  Some were indeed northerners, others lied about their origin just so that they could get the job.  Korean employees of CIA who were tasked with recruiting agents for the program received a bonus for each recruit.  Naturally, some of them lied, even when they knew that the recruit was not a northerner, just so that they could get a bonus.  Some of these "recruiters" made a lot of money.  In the process, they sent the agents to certain death.
     The recruits, after basic intelligence and parachute training were dropped into various areas in North Korea.  Their job was to gather intelligence information and then find their way back to the south to report what they saw.  The success ratio was very low.  Most agents were captured almost immediately upon landing in North Korea.  Some were turned by the North Koreans and returned to the south to be double agents.  Initially, the program was made up predominantly with men, but as the program started to run low on recruits, women were recruited more and more.  Very few, if any of these women returned.  A handful that may have found their way back were more often than not, double agents.  Sadly, the participation of women in the Korean War was not especially on the positive side.  Owing to their desperate financial situation and the greediness and ruthlessness of KLO recruiters, many young women collected their initial bonus pay which they gave to their families, then went off to their death!