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The Korean War (1950–1953) was the first combat employment of Special Forces. Sent to Korea in 1953 in the late stages of the war, Special Forces soldiers participated in two distinct unconventional warfare operations. Some of the Special Forces troops were assigned to work with the North Korean partisan units conducting raids behind the enemy lines from bases on the islands off the coast of Korea. The second mission Special Forces soldiers participated in involved the handling of agents sent behind enemy lines to gather tactical intelligence. This article will examine the role of the organization tasked with conducting the gathering of tactical intelligence, the Tactical Liaison Office (TLO), and the experiences of the Special Forces soldiers serving with the TLO.
Military operations on the Korean peninsula were the responsibility of the United States Far East Command (FEC). Established after World War II, FEC was a joint headquarters located in the Dai’ichi Building in Tokyo, Japan. Since its inception, General Douglas MacArthur commanded FEC as well as being “dual-hatted” as the commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces, Far East, (USAFFE).1 Prior to the war, the G-2 (security) of FEC, Major General Charles A. Willoughby, established the Korea Liaison Office (KLO) to gather intelligence about North Korea.2 At the start of the war, the KLO was virtually the only operational human intelligence asset in Korea. Throughout the war, the KLO provided strategic intelligence for FEC, primarily by inserting agents deep behind enemy lines.
Captain Chester Carpenter was stationed in pre-war Korea with the 671st Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) detachment. He initiated a program that inserted agents into North Korea that provided virtually the only source of information. Some of his agents reached as far north as Manchuria, where they identified the 8th Route Army, a unit of the Chinese Army composed of North Koreans who fought alongside the Communist Chinese against the Japanese in World War II. Carpenter returned to Japan before the start of the war, but returned when hostilities commenced.3
With the start of the war, the KLO remained the primary agency for gathering intelligence at the strategic level. For the acquisition of battlefield intelligence at the tactical and operational level, the U.S. combat divisions initially depended on combat patrols and their own agent programs. Later on the TLO program augmented their efforts.
Timely and accurate intelligence of the composition and disposition of the enemy is a crucial component of conducting combat operations. During the Korean War, both sides depended on infiltrating agents to gather this information. On the United Nations’ side, these “line crossers” were exclusively Korean or Chinese because a Caucasian would have no chance of keeping his identity secret. Women, often with young children or babies, proved to be very effective agents, as did older males. Young, healthy men were in danger of being forcibly conscripted into the North Korean Army if caught in the enemy rear area. Chinese and North Korean defectors in military uniform were often used as line crossers. At different times in the conflict each of these groups made effective line crossers.
The rapid movement of the armies up and down the Korean peninsula characterized the first months of the war. During this period of flux, the presence of large numbers of refugees on the battlefield permitted the insertion of agents, notably women, into the flood of displaced persons. They readily blended into the displaced population and could move with relative ease around the battlefield.4
Sim Yong Hae was a 16-year-old South Korean girl from Suwon. She stayed in her town and witnessed the carnage as the Chinese attacked through it in early 1951. After the UN forces pushed the Chinese back, an American sergeant and a Korean interpreter drove through the town recruiting for the TLO. Patriotism motivated her to join as an agent.5
Sim and three other girls went to the U.S. 25th Infantry Division headquarters at Munsan. She joined a TLO group of thirty to forty people, most of them women. Her particular team was made up of five women and three men. She received rudimentary training on what intelligence to gather. Sim, dressed in civilian clothes and posing as a refugee, went deep into enemy territory and remained there for an extended period.6 She served with the 25th Division TLO as an active agent conducting missions until the spring of 1954.
Captain Chester Carpenter was assigned to the 971st Counter Intelligence Corps detachment before the war and returned to run agents for both the 25th and 2nd Infantry divisions. With one U.S. enlisted man, his Korean interpreter “Ramrod,” and twenty-five North Korean defectors, Carpenter conducted some of the earliest line-crossing operations in the war.7 He moved north out of the Pusan perimeter as the UN forces drove back the North Korean Army. Carpenter and his agents retreated south with the 2nd Infantry Division in the face of the Chinese onslaught in November of 1950. He conducted line-crossing missions until he rotated back to Japan again in June 1951.8
After a fast-paced twelve months of attack and retreat up and down the Korean peninsula, the battle lines hardened along the 38th Parallel in the late spring of 1951. From this point onward, refugees disappeared from front line areas and the insertion of agents through the “No-Man’s Land” between the forces became more difficult. The American units turned to Chinese and North Korean “turncoats” and South Korean civilians, mostly refugees, and dressed them in military uniforms to perform the line-crossing mission.
You Duk Ki fled from Chinnamp’o, North Korea in 1950. He was recruited into the TLO and received a month of training in Taegu. He was sent initially to the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division TLO near Young-gu on the east coast.9 He quickly learned that crossing into enemy territory was often the easiest part of his task.