The Panmunjom Axe Murder incident - 1976

[A Can of Man]

This link has enough information for anyone.
http://members.terracom.net/~vfwpost/opn-PB.html


Basically what happened was that there was a branch that obscured the view of North Korea for the AMericans. So the Americans cut the branch (it was pretty big). As a reprisal, the North Koreans crossed the border and hacked the Americans working on it to death. I think one guy survived.
One of many things that happened along KOrea's border back in the old days.

 

[Damien435]

This link has enough information for anyone.
http://members.terracom.net/~vfwpost/opn-PB.html


Basically what happened was that there was a branch that obscured the view of North Korea for the AMericans. So the Americans cut the branch (it was pretty big). As a reprisal, the North Koreans crossed the border and hacked the Americans working on it to death. I think one guy survived.
One of many things that happened along KOrea's border back in the old days.

Two men died and this was in "no mans land" territory claimed by both North Korea and South Korea but nobody went there unless necessary, which this was. The plan was for two platoons of American soldiers to protect the engineers sent to cut down the branch, one would go with the engineers and the other would stay out of the DMZ but ready to help in a moments notice. The North Koreans confronted the American/South Korean forces, two men were killed, as I recall one of the men was dragged down into that crick you can see to the left of some of the photos and was found several days later. Shortly after this happened Operation Paul Bunyan was launched, American planes were flying on the deck at high speeds pulling back just before hitting the border, I believe a whole brigade was sent into the DMZ to take down the tree, and the Marines were ready to launch an attack on the coast if North Korea wanted to start a war. The result? Tree came down and the North Korean's were forced to back down and they apologized for their actions, the first time they had ever done this in public. It is regretful that these two men died but I believe that in the long run this has saved more lives that it cost.

I believe this link has more information leading up to the attack.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/paul_bunyan.htm

 

[A Can of Man]

Yeah stuff like this happened all the time.
There's been a few incidents where North Korea provoked, we retaliated and in return nothing happened. They seem to happen far often at sea nowadays than on land.

 

[KC72]

i saw a documentary on north korea, and they went to the border from the northern side. When they got there they were shown a small meuseum which actually contained the very axe used, it was in a glass case for people to see.