An Untold Truth: U.S involvement in the Third Tunnel of Aggression
An explosion rattled off, filling the air with a loud reverberation. The blast caused a chain reaction, resulting in a gush of water bursting up from the ground. The commotion alerted its presence to the U.S, and South Korean soldiers posted North in Panmunjom, located in the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
Elsewhere, laughter fills the room as off-duty U.S, and Korean soldiers intermingle together at a wedding. Specialist Everett Smith, a U.S army photographer, saunters through the crowd and chairs with his camera in hand, looking for the best angle in which to capture the bride and groom. Music is playing, people are talking, and their minds have lifted from their duties as soldiers. However, the explosion is about to catch up to them.
The mood becomes sour as the Tunnel Team receives the news. An explosion where Everett and the tunnel neutralization team had been drilling just occurred. After the wedding, the team packed up, slipped on their white armbands — indicating they were unarmed — then hopped in the jeep to head to their site located a few feet from the Middle Demarcation Line (MDL). Watchtowers with North and South Korean soldiers on opposing sides sat by the bright blue buildings of Panmunjom. Soldiers from both sides scanned the area, observing intently as Everett and the others pulled up in the jeep and arrived at their site. “You were subject to being shot if you stepped into their territory,” Everett recounted in an interview we had.
The explosion appeared not to have been caused by their activity. There seemed to be little to no damage, indicating the blast could have been underground. So, the soldiers proceeded with the delegated task given to them by their superiors— keep drilling. What lurked beneath the surface was something the higher-ups had been expecting: a tunnel, the third one to be exact. The workers cheered, and Everett smiled, preparing his camera to document anything they found in the tunnel. Suddenly, the rig operators close to the breakthrough plopped to the ground. Smiles were dropped and replaced with expressions of worry, but also familiar military instincts from years of training kicked in. Everyone burst into motion; Everett clutched his camera. It was going to be a long day.
The Korean Demilitarized Zone
The Korean Demilitarized Zone, otherwise known as the DMZ, is a boundary that separates the Korean Peninsula roughly in half. The creation of the 160-mile-long border happened because of an agreement between North Korea, China, and the United Nations Command in 1953, accompanied by an armistice to stop the fighting between North and South Korea. The Middle Demarcation Line goes down the center of the DMZ and is the official border between the two countries. A substantial amount of the DMZ has been no man’s land ever since the truce, which has let nature bloom undisturbed. It is also well known that landmines from the war are scattered across the DMZ, making the region one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The areas where known landmines exist are marked, approximating 970,000 South of the DMZ alone. Likewise, it is still unclear as to how many there are in total.
The one area where North and South Korean guards meet each other is by the Middle Demarcation line in the peace village called Panmunjom. Panmunjom also referred to as the Joint Security Area, is where the armistice was signed and a couple of miles to where Everett and the drilling team had found the third tunnel. The buildings of Panmunjom are bright blue to make them distinct, and the two Koreas have their own liaison offices and conference halls. Historically, these centers are for negotiations that have had little success. Within Panmunjom, soldiers from both sides face each other across the MDL to ensure neither side crosses the line. North Korean guards also oversee citizens within the country to not cross over into South Korea to escape.
The Tunnels of Aggression
The first North Korean tunnel was discovered on Nov. 15, 1974, when a squad of South Korean soldiers posted at the DMZ noticed steam rising from the ground. A G-3 operations officer in Korea by the name of Lt. Col. Michael Wikan recalled the events in Thomas Murray’s book Espionage and the United States During the 20th Century:
one of the ROK soldiers with sharp eyes noticed the heat waves rising from the ground and went to the location to investigate. When he heard voices up from the small hole, he fastened his bayonet to his rifle and probed — and more earth crumbled. When he fired his rifle into the hole, a volley of North Korean bullets flew back at him from the tunnel — and then silence. The South Korean squad reported the incident and dug a hole to open the tunnel, but no one entered.
The discovery surprised no one because South Korean troops had overheard explosions, subterranean activity, and heavy drilling equipment on the North Korean side of the demarcation line for over a year.
Subsequent exploration of the tunnel occurred five days later by Vietnam veterans U.S Navy Cdr. Robert M. Ballinger and Marine Maj. Anthony Nastri, along with Korean troops led by Maj. Kim Hah-Chul, another Vietnam veteran. Ballinger and Nastri descended into a hole dug by South Korean troops. Seconds later, an explosive device detonated, killing Ballinger instantly. Nastri, who had survived the blast, was quickly pulled out by ROK soldiers. Additionally, Major Kim died in the explosion, and five U.S troops and one ROK soldier suffered wounds.
Future escapades into the tunnel revealed it to be about 4 ft high and 3ft wide. It stretched more than 1,100 yards beyond the demarcation line into South Korea. Reinforced concrete-slab walls aligned the tunnel, along with electrical lighting, weapon-storage areas, and sleeping accommodations. Additionally, the tunnel came with a railway system to traverse it quickly. Estimates concluded the tunnel’s size could accompany approximately two thousand soldiers that could travel through it per hour.
A second tunnel followed the first a few months later on Mar. 19, 1975. The length was similar to the first but was larger by approximately 7-by-7 feet. Penetrating one mile over the DMZ, the bigger size made it possible to fit small vehicles and artillery or an estimate of 30,000 troops per hour. Three separate exits also made it quicker for troops to flow through the tunnels had an invasion occurred. The design and structure for the third and fourth tunnels were almost identical to the second.
The third, and most famous tunnel, was officially discovered on Oct. 17, 1978. But the tunnel had been detected in Jun. due to underground explosions from North Korean tunnelers that had caused a bore hole to shoot up a geyser of muddy water. The tunnel could have gone undetected had it not been for the help of a North Korean defector named Kim Bu-Seong, who, in 1975, had claimed the North had built a secret passageway.
Three years later, Bu-Seong’s tip came through, but the discovery came with complications. Everett and the others who had been away from the hole immediately went into a procedure called MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture. “In layman’s terms, that means we donned our gas masks and put on our chemical protection suits,” Everett said in the interview. With suits and gas masks on, Everett and the drillers went towards the hole and removed the unconscious workers. Soon after, a medical team arrived to evacuate the incapacitated drill operators.
Despite the disaster, there was still a task to be done. The conscious workers hooked a BOHR camera to a cable and lowered it into the tunnel. Upon inspection of the tunnel, they found a water pipe that appeared to be bubbling, confirming that a chemical agent had permeated the air.
A loud thud hit the ground. Everett looked to his left to see another member of the team face down into the soil. Then another. Everett and the remaining men sprinted away from the tunnel to escape the gas. The soldiers discovered that the filters in the gas masks broke down after 10 minutes, providing no protection from the chemical agent.
Everett and the remaining soldiers put on what he called “self-containing breathing units,” otherwise known as self-contained breathing apparatus. Only used when there is an immediate danger to life or health, the suits protected the users from the unknown gas as they rescued the workers who had passed out.
Having got what they needed, the rest of the soldiers evacuated from the area and drove back to Seoul. Everett rotated back to the United States next month, never returning to the site again. After Everett had left, South Korea dug an intersecting tunnel to access the North Korean tunnel. They discovered it was incomplete but was 27 miles from Seoul and — just like the second tunnel — big enough to accommodate 30,000 men per hour.
However, this was not the last he heard of the event. While attending an advanced course at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, he discussed the occurrence with a few chemical non-commissioned officers, who told him they now taught that incident at the chemical school. He also learned that a few of the other soldiers died from the chemical agent, but it was still unclear what gas it could have been.
What is even more interesting about this incident is that there is no mention of it on the Internet; it’s difficult to find if the U.S was even involved. According to a WAPO article written in 1979, “U.S and South Korean engineers” were responsible for digging the intercepting passage that gave them access to the tunnel, but there is still no mention of the gas incident in the report. Not to mention, other sources do not mention U.S involvement at all. Everett, who had worked at the site in June, brings firsthand knowledge that U.S forces were, in fact, there and that the incident did occur. Multiple sources [1][2] reference an explosion of some sort occurring, including a technical report written in 1980 from JASON, a independent group of elite scientists who advise the United States government. The report also notes that only South Korean engineers were present in the digging of the intersecting tunnel on page 10 of the PDF. Additionally, there is nothing that I could find about the gas incident.
When asked why they would exclude the information, Everett replied:
I think it’s because our government had an agreement with the South Korean government that they would take credit for discovering the tunnel and eventually digging another tunnel into it in order to bolster the support for their military. So, basically, they denied that we were involved.
The reasoning for a cover-up like this is still unknown. Perhaps the cover-up wasn’t intentional or there were human errors made along the way that resulted in the gas incident being untold. We may never know. It is hard to decipher between fact and fiction, but, having been there, Everett and the rest of the Tunnel Neutralization members know what happened.
