One of the reasons the war dragged on so long was the prisoner issue.

The Communists would not release our prisoners (any) unless we returned ALL North Korean and Chinese prisoners.

However, many, perhaps most, did not want to go back to the "people's liberated worker's paradise." They wanted to go to Taiwan or be released in the ROK.

Syngman Rhee, for his own political reasons, just had his guards on his PoW camps open the fences and let the prisoners run for the hills rather than go "home."

It took lots of talking but eventually the Communists did release most of our prisoners. IIRC it was finally established that many American and Britishicon PoWs, mainly pilots, were kept in Communist captivity and died there over the next years or even decades.
Information
Warning: This is a relatively older thread
This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.