| Marc, I agree with Ed. The Soviet archives show that most of these "battles" were small scale actions and appear to have consisted of either the repulsion of one side's unconventional forces by the other or company level clashes between patrols and guards. It's easy to blow them up into major clashes, especially by the Communists for use as a propaganda tool. Here's a case from my own experiences in Viet Nam. Ben Tre was the cradle of the VC movement in South Viet Nam, and as such was the most developed of the early VC base areas. The ARVN did not want to go in there, as it was heavily fortified with booby traps and other nasties, but the odd thing is that by 1970 it wasn't heavily populated by VC as most of them had been killed off during Tet 1968. One day in the fall of 1970, a patrol of VC literally bumped into a patrol of seven ARVN led by a sergeant. The VC got the drop on then, and blew them away in a vicious firefight. For the next seven months, they cited their "Great Victory" of that date, and eventually stopped citing "when we killed seven puppet soldiers, including a sergeant." I think over the course of 50+ years most of the DPRK reports have taken on the same legend. Cookie Sewell AMPS |