Out in the Cold: Australia's involvement in the Korean War - Australian POWs in Korea

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Twenty-nine Australians were taken prisoner of war (POW) in Korea, including two officers. The treatment of Australian POWs in Korea was generally better than that meted out by the Japanese to POWs during the Second World War. However there were many Australian POWs who were kept in appalling conditions.

Food allowances were often meagre. One Australian, Private H. R. Madden, 3 RAR, who was captured at Kapyong, died from malnutrition. He was awarded the George Cross posthumously for resisting interrogation and for his generosity in looking after other prisoners.

The Chinese attempted to indoctrinate POWs with communist ideas, but were unsuccessful with Australian prisoners.

When they asked my objections to Communism, I usually kept to one point: the system wouldn't give the political and religious freedom to which a human being is entitled They would almost invariably admit that my idea of freedom and theirs were quite different.

Father Philip Crosbie, an Australian civilian priest working in Korea, held prisoner with Australian POWs in Korea
1950-1953.

For some prisoners, conditions eventually improved, particularly after July 1951, when truce talks began. Generally conditions remained difficult and dangerous. North Korean and Chinese captors often ignored the articles of the 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs.

Many prisoners became filthy, full of lice, festered with wounds full of maggots, unshaven and without haircuts for months on end and were faced with squads of trained interrogators, bullied, deprived of sleep and browbeaten. Of the 100-odd flyers subjected to this kind of treatment, 38 signed 'confessions', believing them to be so silly that no one would believe them.

Captain (later Brigadier) Phillip Greville, 1 RAR, POW Korea 1952-1953

There were political advantages to be gained from the enemy by keeping POWs. The process of exchanging each other's POWs was an important bargaining chip for North Korea in the process of attaining an armistice.

Private Tom Hollis, a 25-year-old veteran of the Second World War, was taken prisoner while on patrol behind enemy lines in January 1951. He was held in various camps for over two years. During this time he was frequently beaten, tortured, and confined to a 4-metre square cell called the "sweat box" for up to a month.

When Australian POW in Korea, Private Eric Donnelly, 3 RAR, and other prisoners were released, they met the Australian freelance journalist Wilfred Burchett, whose activities in Korea was to cause much bitterness and controversy for years to come.