But South Korean troops, newly arrived in Wonsan, came up with a brutal solution to the problem: They press-ganged a group of North Korean prisoners and, working in a grid, systematically marched them along the beach. “It was a surrealistic scene,” recalled Alexander Haig, who witnessed it, “with men stepping on mines and being blown to bits and the others closing the interval and marching stolidly onward.” Eventually, nearly every one of the prisoners had been killed by their own army’s explosives.
