Stuff You Should Know - Operation Paul Bunyan

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

If we told you that World War III was in danger of happening over the trimming of a tree would you believe us? This was Operation Paul Bunyan.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, Harry Potter fans. Huge news. Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions, are all being released on Audible, on a monthly basis, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

is already out. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect. Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy and is Baltimore, Riz Ahmed is Snape,

and Cush Jumbo as the narrator. And there are too many others to name. There's even a brand new musical score, and the sound design, you'll feel like you're right there. Footsteps echoing down the halls of Hogwarts, a golden snitch flying past your ear. The Hogwarts Express rumbling out of platform 9 and 3 quarters, and it's all in Dolby Atmos, which makes the wizardry even more magical. Plus, these are the unabridged versions, even more awesomeness. As I mentioned, the first book is out, and the next installments in the series will be released every month

until all seven are out. go to audible.ca slash HP1 and start listening now. And she said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying, suicides that don't make sense, strange accidents, and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.

Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murders, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife women's health directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and it's just us, and that's okay, because we can support one another. and ourselves. We're grown men, and we feel good about things, especially us. Well, not especially, but equally with us. And this is stuff we should know. I mean, you told me, uh, you sent me a text very early that said put on your big boy pants today. Yeah, because Jerry's not showing up. Yeah, so I got him out, my breeches. Yeah? Are they green jeans? Oh, I've got on green cords. No. I do. These are kind of my favorites, actually, these forest green cords. Great for this time of year. I don't remember those.

I remember some brownish, topy, kind of shiny tope ones. Am I making that up? No, I have cords of many colors, much like Joseph. Are they the thick whales or the thin whales? The thins. I don't get into the thick stuff anymore. That was 90s, Chuck, probably. Yeah, but I'll bet they're going to make a comeback.

I bet you. Okay. I think we should start. talk about this, because we probably have some non-regular listeners who have military backgrounds who are like, what the hell is this, who want to hear about Operation Paul Bunyan, which is the point of all this. And I'm guessing just from the title, there's probably a lot of people in the military who know what we're talking about already. It seems to be a fairly widespread, widely known incident that took place in 1976. We're just going to call it an incident

at the DMV, DMZ, that was totally unintentional. An incident at the DMZ, that's where we're going to start out calling it. We'll eventually maybe refine that over time, but we should probably talk about what the DMZ is in the first place, right? Yeah, and by the way, I'm looking real quick because I could have sworn this probably came from someone, but I usually make a note and I'm not seeing that, but I am seeing that Pop-Tarts came from Nelson Reynolds, so sorry for that, Nelson. Sorry, Nelson.

But, yeah, the DMZ, I guess we should set up just sort of the deal between North Korea and South Korea and the United States post-World War II was the Soviets and the Americans got together and said, all right, Korea and Korea, obviously, got involved and said, we're going to be two nations, let's confuse everybody and call the Communist North Korea inside the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and called the Democratic and South Korea. side, just the Republic of Korea. And if you've ever heard of the 38th parallel, that's the famous dividing line between these two. Yeah, North Korea and South Korea got divided after World War II because there was a power vacuum and the communists were fighting in the north and they were fighting the U.S. friendly South Koreans and the North Koreans were like, this can't stand. We want the whole peninsula and they invaded and the Korean war broke out like you said.

And it lasted for three years. I always thought it was Americans who were fighting in Korea, but it turns out there were plenty of American troops, mostly American troops, but they were part of a UN command that was actually fighting the North along with the South Koreans. Yeah, I think it's like 90% American forces. And you said it lasted three years.

I think the Korean War is one of those that technically never ended. True. Officially because, I mean, that's kind of one of those nitpicky trivia questions. That's a good one. That, you know, there was never an official treaty ending the war. came to a truce or an armistice because of a stalemate, basically, after three years. But I think, you know, on the books, the Korean War never technically ended.

Yeah, that's my understanding, too. Well, good point. So one of the big things about this armistice agreement was that it was like, okay, you guys, we need some separation here. And they literally separated North Korea from South Korea. Like you said, the dividing line runs roughly along the 38th parallel. But on either side of that border of North and South Korea, there's a buffer zone, the demilitarized zone, the DMZ I was referring to before. I think it's 2.4 miles wide total, 1.2 miles on either side.

And that is, like, effectively the de facto border between North and South. No one's supposed to come into that no-man zone, no man's land, the DMZ. But inside the DMZ, there's a little tiny village. called the Panmujam. And I know of that from Billy Joel. Yeah. I knew he was going to come up. That was it.

And then some of the other Korean town names that came up like K-Song and all this. I'm like, how do I know all these? How do they sound familiar? And then I realized watching MASH with my dad. Oh, yeah. And it's this little tiny militarized spot inside the demilitarized zone.

And it's where North Korea and South Korea actually come together, physically can come together in this, what's called the JSA, the Joint Security Area. Yeah, so if they, over the years, have to meet to negotiate anything, that's where they meet. That's where the governments go. There's a very famous bridge there separating the two, the bridge of no return. It's very dramatic if you look at pictures of it.

It's literally like, you know, on one side is one thing, on the other side is the other. And that's where they do prisoner exchanges and stuff like that. And these days, you know, it's, well, largely because. of this incident, I think, it's not the same as it was back then. No. It's very separate. Back then, the joint security area was, you know, it was jointly patrolled, like, you know, North Koreans and South Korean soldiers and American soldiers were patrolling the area at the

same time. There was face-to-face contact. They would try to intimidate one another. They would, you know, curse at one another, maybe spit at one another. The Americans would play hopscotch on the bridge. The North Koreans would, you know, drive a truck really fast toward them and slam on the brakes. They would sneak up and bang on their checkpoint barracks at night and stuff like that. It was crazy to think that these kind of shenanigans were going on without any further, you know, sort of war breaking out.

They all kind of seemingly took it in stride. Well, that's what their orders were. The UN command troops and the Americans in particular had specific orders to, Like, if you had to defend yourself physically because you were getting beat up, okay, but you did not shoot. You had to be shot at to draw your sidearm. And that was the most powerful weapon that anyone patrolling the joint security area had. They were often outfitted with axe handles, maybe batons. And that was about it. So the Americans had strict orders not to take the bait. And North Korean troops had essentially strict orders to provoke the Americans into it. attacking so that they could start a war again, and it would be the Americans' fault. Exactly. And this came largely from the guy in charge. I mean, you know, it came from on high, I'm sure, but it was filtered down through Captain Arthur Bonifas. He was a Vietnam vet. He was the JSA company commander. He was 33 years old. He was a big dude. He was 6.3. Apparently

super popular, like a father figure as far as his command went. And the camp there, at JSA's name, Camp Boniface after him. So you may see where this is headed. But he, you know, he believed in standing your ground, but not taking the bait, like you said. Like, he wanted big guys down there. He wanted to kind of intimidate. But the orders were always to back off if it came to blows. And sometimes it would, like, you know, you could get beat up or something and it would not escalate further, which is just crazy to think about.

It is. It's hard to imagine. You said that Bonifaz was into intimidating without, you know, doing it, like just being physically intimidating. Yeah. If you were assigned to patrol JSA, this was a really, really high-stakes area, still is today. Bill Clinton toured it in the 90s and went as far as out under the bridge of no return. And he said later that Pamu Jom is the scariest place on Earth. that's a president saying that he's probably been to some scary places and at least knows about them

so that really says quite a bit so if you're assigned to this area it's a big deal and so you had to be over six feet tall but you also had to be laid back by nature and rather cool-headed like even when provoked like they really tested the people who were assigned there yeah they'd walk up and they'd slap you and see what you did they would apparently while they were interviewing you that you'd have no idea they just start shouting at you out of the out of nowhere to see how you responded were they really yeah oh wow yeah there's a really that's a great um chance to shout out there's a adivist article called axes of evil written by josh dean and it's it's a really great detailed look at this whole thing that we're talking about today that would be a x e s in this case right yeah

very clever hmm bit of a uh what do you call it We're recording early, so I can't think of the word. The foreshadowing? Yeah, maybe that's it. Play on words, a pun? No, foreshadowing is probably it. Okay. I think people are probably concerned because I couldn't think of foreshadowing.

I couldn't think of chemistry the other day, and it drove me crazy. Oh, man. Aging is real. Yeah. And a privilege, as they say. So before this incident that we're about to talk about, there was one example we should mention when North Korean troops were kind of mussel in the hair. of a soldier named William Henderson, and he did not take it well. I guess he was into his hair

or something. He got mad, took a swing, and got a, I guess, a throat chop or something, and got a busted larynx, and such that Bonifas wrote his wife and said, our mission here is to take the verbal abuse, the kicking the shoving, but to not let it go any further. Major Henderson lost his cool and blew it. It's a natural reaction, but he should have known better. Yeah, and it was a big deal. So I also saw that Henderson was provoked by a journalist who spat at him when Henderson stood up, the journalist hit him, and then finally Henderson hit him back, and then all of a sudden a bunch of North Korean troops jumped on him. But the fact that he took the bait was a big deal because he was a major. That means you're a big deal at a camp already. Like, you're fairly high up.

So him fighting back was, yeah, that was a big deal. Maybe an early-ish break here. It seems like a good dividing line. I think we should. Well, we'll take a break, and we'll come back and talk about the tree that started the whole thing. All right. Hey, Harry Potter fans. Huge news. Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions are all being released on Audible on a monthly basis,

and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is already out. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect. Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy in his Baltimore, Riz Ahmed is Snape, and Cush Jumbo as the narrator. And there are too many others to name. There's even a brand new musical score. And the sound design, you'll feel like you're right there. Footsteps echoing down the halls of Hogwarts, a golden snitch flying past your ear. The Hogwarts Express rumbling out of platform 9 and 3 quarters,

and it's all in Dolby Atmos, which makes the wizardry even more magical. Plus, these are the unabridged versions, even more awesomeness. As I mentioned, the The first book is out, and the next installments in the series will be released every month until all seven are out. Go to audible.ca slash HP1 and start listening now. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop?

What? Yeah. Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads. Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow.

Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcast we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes.

Listen to Season 4 of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. We were in the car, like a Rolling Stone came on, and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is shoes and identity that other people can't have. I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the moving and important stories

I'll be holding space for on my upcoming 13th season of Family Secrets. Whether you've been on this journey with me from season one or just joining the Family Secrets family, we're so happy to have you with us. I'll dive deep into the incredible power of secrets, the ones that shape our identities, test our relationships, and ultimately reveal who we truly are. Listen to Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. pick up on my bad pun of the dividing line.

Oh, what was it? I said it's a dividing line, like, you know, the 38th parallel. It just is so natural that I totally missed it. It's also early for me, too. I couldn't tell, by the way, that short stuff that you sent that we're going to record later had a bunch of puns in it, and I didn't know if that was intentional or not. I can think of one, and it was intentional. There were a couple.

Okay. You've got to point them out. Yeah. boy what a what a little tease of a whole different episode you're such a tease so uh all right now we get to the paul bunyan uh what what instigated the paul bunyan incident or operation right which was this tree that you mentioned there was a tree it was a poplar tree near the bridge of no return and the thing you need to know about this tree well there's a few things but one is that it blocked the view of the line of sight between these two u.n command checkpoints

And that was a big deal because you needed an open line of sight between these checkpoints because, you know, there were incidents of like kidnapping and stuff like that and other shenanigans. And you just, you had to have that line of sight open. Yep. So they said the UNC was like, we got to get rid of this tree. So they sent a couple of unarmed South Korean workers down there to just sort of figure out the best way to remove it. And the first sort of reaction was the North Korean guards chased them away. So that was sort of the line in the same. saying was get out of here, get away from that tree.

Yeah. Apparently, they tried again a couple days later and got rained out. And then finally, on August 18th, they were like, okay, we're just going to go ahead and do this. Those first guys got chased off, so we're going to essentially assign a few men to escort them. I think a 15-man team went over on August 18th, led by Captain Boniface. And they started pruning the tree. Yeah, just to prune at this point. Yeah, they're just prune at this point. pruning it back. They just want to make sure that even during summer, they can see Checkpoint

3, the loneliest outposts in the world, because like you said, it's very dangerous to man that. So they're just pruning it, right? And very quickly, the North Koreans came over the bridge of no return. Because remember, mind-bogglingly, the joint security area was open. Like, the border didn't exist in the joint security area. So North Koreans and UN command could just go wherever they want. So the North Koreans show up at this site at the poplar tree while it's being pruned. And they're led by Lieutenant Pak Chul. He was known as Lieutenant Bulldog by the UN command troops because he was very confrontational, had provoked confrontation in the past plenty of times. And so he showed up, so you just immediately knew that this could go south

pretty quickly. Yeah, and apparently he said, you know, they wanted to keep that tree pristine. Because Kim Il-sung personally planted it and nourished it and it's growing under his supervision. So apparently, or at least they said, it was a special tree and to stand down. Yes, because Kim Il-sung was the, he was the first dear leader. Kim Jong-un is his grandson. Yeah. Yeah. And so the idea that dear leader planted that tree, I don't know if that's true.

I never saw that. I just saw it like stated here or there, but at the very least, Pock Chul said that, right? Yeah, I'm not sure if I buy that, given what we now have sort of suspected about this being a provocation, which we'll get to. But that sounds to me like, hey, let's tell him that, you know, it's a special tree. Yeah, like he's like Pachchul seemed like the kind who would just load you up on BS just to mess with you. Yeah, so he called for even more reinforcements. I think about 30 more North Korean guards showed up.

He ordered Captain Bonifaz to stop, but he turned his back on him, which I think was a pretty big insult on top of everything else. And as the story goes, one of the American soldiers saw Pock take off his wristwatch and put it in his pocket, which is, I guess, akin to like Fonzi taking off his leather jacket. Like, it's about to happen. Right. And tried to warn Boniface, but it was too late by that point, and Pock ordered the attack. basically by saying, like, I think he said, kill the bastards, right? Yeah, I saw a 1977 Army War College report on the incident,

and that's what they said. So I'm prone to believe them. Yeah. But he said it in Korean, obviously. Right. But right after that, they, the men attacked. And actually, I saw Lieutenant Pak Chul assaulted Captain Bonifos, who had, again, is back to Pak Chul.

Yeah. He hit him with the karate chop in the back of his neck and dropped Captain Bonifas. And very, very sadly, Captain Bonifos never got to his feet again. Yeah. Like immediately he was set upon by, saw five to six North Korean troops, just started being beaten by them.

And I guess the people who were cutting the tree had a couple of axes, these civilians, and they dropped their axes and ran. And the North Korean troops picked up the axes. And here is where the reason that this is called the DMZ axe incident begins. That's right. So Bonifaz was bludgeoned to death by these guys attacking him.

And you can watch this. Like it was caught on film. It's very chaotic. You can't really get, I mean, it's kind of from far away, so you can't get a lot of detail. But, you know, there are still shots in film of this stuff going on. So he was bludgeoned. First Lieutenant Mark Barrett was also beaten to death. He was chased down over a retaining wall.

And, you know, sort of the, I mean, it's sad enough as it is. But Bonifas was due to go home. to his wife and three kids in three days. So it made it, you know, sort of especially brutal. Yeah. And not like for a visit. Like this was his last three days in Korea where he was murdered by an axe by North Korean troops. It's almost like a parody.

Like it's almost too crazy to believe that that's how close he was to leave in Korea. He was also going to be promoted to major too. Like he was, his life was like looking up when he was murdered. Yeah. Really sad. So this was a. a really, really big deal, as you can imagine. This is the first time that any UN command troops and any Americans had been killed in Korea since the end of the Korean War. It was a huge

provocation. And there was a big question now on the table. What is the United States military going to do that two of its officers were murdered by acts? by North Korean troops totally unprovoked. This was 100% the North Koreans doing this, so much their fault that, like you said, it almost seems like it was possibly set up. We'll talk about that a little bit later. And so there was a big question

that needed to be answered and answered really fast, and that was how are we going to respond to this? Yeah, so on the U.S. side at the time, we had Henry Kissinger as the Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford, like we mentioned, it was 76, so it was the election year between Ford and Jimmy Carter. And Ford learned about the incident when he was at the Republican National Convention. And obviously, as Secretary of State, Kissinger was kind of in charge of figuring out what to do.

Calls together the Washington Special Action Group, which was a task force that was formed in 69 out of Vietnam to deal with, like, sort of any emergencies like this that came up. And it's Henry Kissinger. So he's like, we should bomb the barracks. Like, he wants to flatten the barracks of the guards that attack them and react really strongly and send a, you know, a big message that this will not stand. Yeah. I mean, I can kind of understand that impulse. He was apparently the only one in the special action group

that wanted to respond with a violent action. And the reason why was because this is such a flashpoint. Still today. But at this time, I mean, I mean, it was, like, we were still in the middle of the Cold War. So to us, not only was this North Korea, but this is also China and the USSR right behind them, right? Oh, yeah.

So if you sent a missile into the JSA against the North Koreans, there was a better than even chance, probably, that you might spark a nuclear war, World War III. Yeah. And luckily, cooler heads prevailed. But Kissinger had a, I think he was probably a little paranoid, I would guess he was, he's very widely reviled, including by me. So I'm pretty sure he was at least a little paranoid.

I mean, he started out in the Nixon administration, for goodness sake. But he was also, his position was also that this was a provocation by the North to test America's resolve because it was an election year. They were trying to interfere with the election to make the point of Gerald Ford's opponent, Jimmy Carter, who was saying, we need to get troops out of Korea. We don't have any business being there anymore. So Kissinger thought this was North Korea doing this to basically show that the Americans didn't belong here anymore. And just to get out wasn't worth it, basically.

Yeah. And I get the idea. I mean, I was but five at the time. Not super into politics yet. But I get the idea that getting American troops out of Korea was probably a pretty popular idea that Carter was laying out. Yeah. Especially if they're Vietnam. Yeah.

Well, and Kissinger was still ticked off about Vietnam. So he was like, if we don't do this, it's going to send a message that to other Asian countries and the USSR and China that we have no resolve and that we're going to stand down. And, you know, he wanted his guy Ford back in there, obviously. So he was outvoted, like he said, thankfully. But he was like, all right, we still need a show of force. Like, we need to do something. And the one thing that everybody in the room agreed on, even if it was, I mean, I know it was somewhat strategical, but it was also. symbolic, they were like, we're cutting that G.D. tree down. No matter what anyone else says,

we're going to cut that thing down. And they were all like, harumpf, harumph. So, yeah, they decided, okay, we're not going to actually destroy anything. We're not going to fire any missiles. We're not going to kill anybody. But that doesn't mean we're not going to show them that we could do that if we wanted to. Right. And what they came up with was known as Operation Paul Bunyan, which is one of the better names of any operation I've ever heard. Yeah, totally. It was under command of General Richard Stilwell. He was the commander-in-chief of the UN command there.

And the message, like you said, was to sort of intimidate, show that we could do something if we wanted to. They had 40,000 troops over there that were, I mean, Dave says here it was raised to DefCon 3, which is somewhat counterintuitive because it's raising a number, even though it's being lowered, right? Yeah, right in the middle between 1 and 5 and 1's the highest. It is very confusing. Yeah, so you're raising DefCon, but the number goes lower.

It took me a second to figure that out, but I have seen War Games, so I know how it works. And I did just see the House of Dynamite. Have you seen that yet? The new Catherine Bigelow movie? No. It's, I think it's on, I think it's a Netflix movie about sort of a modern, you know, what would happen if nuclear arms were launched? Like, what would we do?

So it's a very tense thing, and there's lots of DefCon talk. And I liked a lot of it. Yeah, I mean, I'll just say that. I can get that. I think she's directly funded by the CIA, honestly. Catherine Bigelow? Yeah. She definitely has her niche, you know?

Yeah, for sure. I would recommend it. I didn't care for the Third Act that much, but... House of Dynamite? I think that's what it's called. It's a great name. Yeah. I mean, you get Idriselba as the president, so that's always a good move.

Oh. I'll say that. Wait, you're talking about that. He's in it with John Sina. John Sina's the American president. And Idriselva's the prime minister, and they actually end up being, like, action heroes? No.

Idriselva's the American president. John Sina, he's nowhere to be found. I'm thinking of something else now. You're thinking something else. Anyway, Operation Paul Bunyan is set up for, I mean, I know I'm saying bunyan, but that's just because of my weird accent. It's Bunyan.

August 21st, this is three days after the axe attack. And what they were going to do was mobilize sort of the largest mobilization of our forces and defenses in the Korean Peninsula since that 53 armistice with some pretty heavy artillery and airships and sea ships. Yeah. I mean, remember when Captain Boniface went to escort the tree trimers, there were 15 people. Now there's 800 men involved in this tree trimming. And it's not even a tree trimming at this point, right? Now they're aiming to, like, cut the tree down. Yeah, they hate this tree at this point.

Right. They want that tree dead. Especially if they think that dear leader planted it, right? This tree has now become super symbolic. Blood has been shed to prune this tree. And you said that there was a ton of artillery and armaments as part of the show of force, and boy, you got it right. Yeah, I mean, they had flying overhead in clear view

so everyone could see, you know, what was going on. They had 20 Huey helicopters, they had 12 Cobra gunships, B-52 bombers, tank buster F-4, phantom fighter jets, F-11, strategic bombs. I mean, they're pulling out all the stops, and off the coast they had the USS, USS, USS, did I say three S's or two, U.S. Midway, four frigates and a cruiser, and aircraft taking off flying overhead, I mean, it was a real show of intimidation. Yeah, those B-52s that take the intimidation even further, we're flying inside North Korean airspace, not too far from Pyongyang. They were also strapped with nukes. There were nuclear missiles in this theater now.

Not just the B-52s carrying them, but those F-1-11s were also carrying nuclear warheads as missiles. So the idea is here, as part of Operation Paul Bunyan, is to trim the tree or cut the tree down now. and to also show North Korea, like, you do not want to mess with us. Do not ever do anything like that again? And to be prepared that if North Korea did do something, if they were provoked by this tree cutting down, that they would just be essentially wiped off the map as a nation. Yeah, for sure.

And, you know, after I was studying all this, right in the middle of it, I got weirdly very sad for this tree. Yeah, I saw that tree in the middle of all of it. I've seen other people refer to as the poor tree. I know, because in the middle of all this stuff, I mean, these, you know, bombers are flying overhead and these troops are amassing, these heavy artillery on each side of the bridge. And I just picture that, you know, I know I'm anthropomorphizing.

I always say that wrong. Say it for me. Anthropomorphizing. You said it. You just said it so lowly. That's right. This tree, but I just pictured this poor tree sitting there like, man, I just want to be a tree. I wish I were a shrub.

I don't want to start World War III or be cut down. I know. That tree did not get their wish. I'll grow slower, I promise. Right. Here, I can just shed a few limbs. So Major General John Singlab, Dave helped us with this, found a quote that just showed how serious this was. And he said it was my estimate shared by many of the staff that the operations did a 50-50 chance of starting a war.

And that would have been World War III. Absolutely. A nuclear war. This tree cutting operation could have sparked World War III. No joke. Again, that is how tense things are at the DMZ, even still to this day. All right. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's take a break. And then we're going to talk about Operation Paul Bunyan commencing. Hey, Harry Potter fans. Huge news. Harry Potter, the full cast audio edition. are all being released on Audible on a monthly basis,

and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is already out. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect. Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy and is Voldemort, Riz Ahmed is Snape, and Cush Jumbo as the narrator.

And there are too many others to name. There's even a brand new musical score. And the sound design, you'll feel like you're right there. Footsteps echoing down the halls of Hogwarts, a golden snitch flying past your ear. the Hogwarts Express rumbling out of platform 9 and 3 quarters, and it's all in Dolby Atmos, which makes the wizardry even more magical.

Plus, these are the unabridged versions, even more awesomeness. As I mentioned, the first book is out, and the next installments in the series will be released every month until all seven are out. Go to audible.ca slash HP1 and start listening now. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop?

What? Yeah. Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads. Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow.

Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to solve? launch into the show. Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcasts we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich.

So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Fu with Ed Helms on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm I'm I Belongoria. And I'm Mytego-Mish-Hun. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, We mix two of our favorite things, food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells,

and they called these Ostercon, to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the Ostercon. And because we've got a very Mikaasa esucasa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the point, planet was through the Gulf of Mexico, not of America.

No, the Gulf of Mexico, continue to be so forever and ever. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, they had education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Chuck, this is not a reckless thing. As a matter of fact, this was really calculated.

You mentioned General Stillwell, who was in charge of every American troop in Korea. He personally came up with this. plan. And he was not a war hawk, but he also, it was a really good plan, especially if all of the troops like followed orders and nobody tried anything provocative and nobody took any bait from the North Koreans. It was a very good plan. But the United States was not reckless in this, in carrying out this plan. They actually got in touch with China and the USSR and basically said, hey, you know, we're thinking about doing something like this. And China and the U.S. SSR both signaled that they were not going to do anything if North Korea started fighting that

North Korea was on their own. I think they blink twice and pulled their left earlobe and then touched the bill of their cap. And the United States is like, oh, we got you. So now it was a little less tense, even though it could still start a war with North Korea. At least we had this idea that China and the USSR wouldn't immediately intervene. Yeah, I immediately thought of Dr. Strangelove. And I could just hear Peter Sellers on the phone going, well, Dimitri, you see, there's this tree. That's perfect. It's so great. I think we didn't mention, too, that the actual tree cutting was going to be done by unarmed military engineers that they sent forward.

Yeah. I mean, the fact that they weren't armed is kind of neither here or there because there were so many arms. I think the people actually on the bridge supposedly just had like these, you know, clubs and accent. and side arms, but both sides of the bridge were stocked with heavy artillery from both sides. And I also saw that the South Korean faction that was assisting us, they rolled in and blocked the bridge, and I don't think they were supposed to have anything more than just pistols, but they unloaded a bunch of sandbags and had a bunch of M16s hidden that they took out. Yeah, they also showed that they had Claymore mines, land mines, strapped to their chest,

and they had the detonators in their other hand and were daring the North Koreans to come get them because they would blow themselves up and the North Koreans. And this had not been passed by the UN command force or anything like that. No one had any idea that the South Korean commandos were going to do something like that. Because again, we're trying to not let this be, you know,

any more tense than it already is. And all of a sudden there's essentially suicide bombers on the scenes like mocking the North Koreans. So that definitely altered things. a little bit. Play more with Claymore. Oh, yeah, I forgot that. I knew that from being a kid.

Where did you hear that? Is it just from the military and it trickled out? No, I thought it was the Simpsons, wasn't it? No, I think it was like a, maybe in a Rambo or something. Like, there's no way I would have known that as a kid. Yeah, okay. I can't remember where I heard it first. But at any rate, it's a very tense scene.

I think we've setting that up. And again, you know, we had orders not to provoke. Like our mission is to cut that tree down, but all hell's going to break loose if anything happens. And like you mentioned, North Korea had some pretty decent incentive to kind of start some fighting. They didn't want World War III, but they wanted to, you know, they wanted South Korea still at this point. Yeah, plus also Kim Il-sung, the dear leader, the first-year leader, he was a communist guerrilla fighting the Japanese in World War II. He was battle-hardened and tested. Yeah.

So he was totally into fighting. He wasn't like a dove or a diplomat at all. Yeah, and I think we didn't mention, too, that the previous tree trimming, supposedly we had told them that this was going to happen. And so the whole provocation to begin with, if they knew about it ahead of time, then they came down there with that knowledge. Because they didn't raise any objections, apparently. We were like, hey, we're going to trim this tree so we can have a better line of sight.

Right. And you'll have a better line of sight. site, and no one said anything, you know, to the contrary. So the whole thing was really provocation by the North Koreans. Yeah, absolutely. That was the first time when Captain Bonifoss and Lieutenant Barrett got murdered, right? Yeah, exactly, which again made it sort of seem like it was planned to begin with. Yeah, for sure. So at 0,700 hours, that's 7 a.m. on August 21st, 1976, Operation Paul Bunyan commences. And like you said, I mean, basically what we described,

there was an order not to engage. I mean, essentially, if the North Koreans started unloading with sniper fire or machine guns, then, yes, we're going to engage. And it was a very tense operation, but they got in there. The military engineers cut the tree, essentially down to a 10-foot stump. They were using, I read, Vietnam Air, issue chainsaws that weren't in very good shape.

So it took them a little while, but it took him about 45 minutes to complete the whole thing. They should have sent out Leather Face. He should have. He could have gotten that done in 10 minutes. Yeah. But they left this big stump with a two, like it was branching at the top. And one of the soldiers who was at the scene said that it looked like somebody raising their arms and surrender. Like the North Koreans were surrendering.

Yeah, I saw that Kissinger tried to get a carving artist in there to shape it in the form of the middle finger. Right. Those guys are great. The chainsaw artists? Man. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I don't know if the intent was ever to cut down the entire tree. I don't think that that was the plan, even in the second time, even in Operation Paul Bunyan.

But they left this stump. Everybody on the U.S. side just went back out. They just withdrew. The operation was successful, but things were still quite tense. It wasn't clear whether North Korea was going to respond still. Just because the operation was done and now there weren't a bunch of troops, America or the UN command, they just kept patrolling the joint security area like it was any other day. Because that's what it was supposed to be, even though this operation had commenced, it was now over, so things were supposed to go back to normal. But we still had no idea what. North Korea was going to do. So, you know, pretext to this was they were very unapologetic about the whole incident leading up to that, like after Captain Boniface and Lieutenant Barrett were killed. But after Paul Bunyan, they thankfully backed off. There wasn't like an expressed apology, but President Kim Il-sung did express regret for those deaths. So they clearly were sort of backing down at this point.

You know, much to everyone's relief. And it was this incident that basically everyone was like, hey, you know what, maybe this, maybe we didn't think this through how this thing operates with these guys all being here in the same place at all times. Right. And so it's set up much differently now. So you, the actual line that runs the length of the DMC is the actual dividing line even through the JSA. Yeah, that dividing line, the military demarcation line, that is the actual border as far as I understand between North Korea and South Korea. with the DMZ buffers on either side of it. And they just ignored it in the JSA,

but then they started enforcing it. So now the North Korean troops and the UN command troops do not intermingle, even though their posts are feet away from one another. Yeah. It would be a really big deal for one to attack the other because you would be crossing the border now.

There's no free... That's an invasion. It would be an enormous deal. It would be an international. incident. And in fact, there was something like that. In 1984, there was a Soviet exchange student who was on a tour with the North Koreans who ran across the border to defect into the West. And a firefight started that resulted in the deaths of three North Koreans and one UN command South Korean soldier. And it was a huge, again, an international incident because some of the

North Korean troops had run across the demarcation line to chase after the dead. effector. Yeah, for sure. So everyone is like pretty happy and considered a success except for Kissinger, of course. The North Koreans back down really quickly. So it really didn't give him any chance during this election year to kind of tout some big victory of America. I mean, it was a victory, but I don't think it was like some huge international news thing. He wanted, he still wanted them to have blown up the barracks or to taken out like a warship or two. as a big show of four. So everyone was pretty stoked, except for old Henry.

So they left that poplar tree there as a reminder, a monument of sorts, actually, until the 10th anniversary of the Axe Murder Incident on August 18th, 1986, they pulled the tree out, stomp and all, roots and all, and replaced it with a memorial. And there's a plaque on it that reads, On this spot was located the yellow poplar tree, which was the focal point of the axe murders

of two United Nations command officers, kept to Arthur Bonifos and First Lieutenant Mark Barrett, who were attacked and killed by North Korean guards while supervising a work party, trimming the tree on 18 August, 1976. And it's just so plainly put without any flowery language that it also just kind of gets across the horrible absurdity of the whole thing. Yeah, for sure. And just a few years ago in 2022, there was a sort of a joint show of, not friendship, but like maybe we should kind of literally put this to rest by planting a tree.

I think the presidents of the two countries got together in the JSA to plant a pine tree of peace. And they took turns shoveling soil from each side, watered it with rivers from each side. Yeah. And the pine tree of peace became, you know, and right now is sort of a, big symbol of kind of what happened there, and maybe let's try and just chill things out a little bit. Yeah, what made it even more significant was that the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, was actually one of the South Korean commandos who took part in Operation Paul Bunyan.

Yeah, it's crazy. And then there's one other little note that I found pretty interesting. There's a one hole par three, well, golf, I don't think you could call it a course, but it's like an astroturf, well, par three, that's surrounded by landmines now where the poplar tree used to be and it's called the Most Dangerous Hole in Golf from Sports Illustrated.

Yeah, and we never really said, you know, we kind of hinted around that this might have been all planned to begin with. And there is circumstantial evidence that suggests that that whole attack was pre-planned to begin with. Right. You know, because I mentioned

that we had gotten in touch with them and said, prune this tree, and no one really said, like, no, don't do that. And so that attack seemingly came out of nowhere, but one big clue was, I think, three minutes after this incident occurred, Radio Pyongyang, which is the North Korean State Radio, they broadcast a very biased report on this, like, right after it happened. So it seems pretty clear that it was pre-planned, but analysis later on seems to indicate that the Soviets did not know about it and they were kind of acting on their own. No. I saw one other piece of circumstantial evidence too. It kind of is pretty definitive is that

within five hours, there was a non-aligned nation, which were the nations during the Cold War who didn't choose sides. All of them were meeting in Korea. And within five hours, Korean delegates were at that meeting handing out memos, describing this, the axe murders, and totally, blaming it on the Americans, like completely flipped it around in an effort to kind of drum up support to get the Americans out. So that's, it does seem pretty likely that the North Koreans planned the axe murders. Yeah, I agreed. You got anything else? Uh, I got nothing else. This is a good one, man. Hats off to the person or people who suggested it and maybe listen out for a future random episode where we thank you for it.

I couldn't find it. I might have found this on my own. I'll help you look. You know what? I think I was looking for live show topics and came across this. Oh, cool. Yeah, this would have been a good one, but there's a lot of downers, too. Yeah.

Not a lot of jokey, ridiculous stuff. Yeah. Do you have anything else? I do. I do not. Okay. Well, that means it's time for listener, ma'am. I'm going to call this the pain of preemption, because that's what Michael called it.

Hey guys, love the Saturday morning cartoon episode. I was born in 84 and watched them well into high school. Your episode covered a lot, but you left out one thing, the pain of preemption. Local channels carried the big networks would often cut off the cartoons to show golf, baseball, or other sports. And as a kid, I know. I never knew when this is going to happen. Just suddenly the joy of cartoon was abruptly halted, show a golf match that no kid would care about. I never got to see the Christmas special, Christopher the Christmas Tree, or the last

episode of Ultimate Muscle. I haven't heard of any, either one of those. I haven't either, but I still feel for him. He said, I don't want to bring down the room, but it's important to remember that those wonderful mornings could be broken at any time. Thanks for making such a great show. That is from Michael J. Crandall. And I forgot to mention Michael, his initial salutation was, Dear Mike and Josh. Wow, he's got himself on the brain.

I know. Well, that was a great email, Michael. And thank you, too, Mike, for reading it. Okay, I'll be Mike. No, you're not, Mike. You're Chuck. Everybody knows that. That's my brother's middle name, too, though, so that would imply.

Scott, Mike? No, no, no. That's his first name. I forget my brother and my sister, their middle name is their name, which is interesting. I'm not sure why that happened. This has gotten so confusing to me. He's Michael Scott. Is he really?

Yeah. That's awesome. Why are you not calling him that all the time? I don't know. I probably should. I mean, that's the office guy, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I never have thought about that until right now.

Well, that's what I'm going to call him from now on. All right. Okay. If you want to be like Michael Crandall, not Michael Scott, and send us an email, we would love that. Please do, you can send it off to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you.

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