Abstract

The Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950. The armistice talks, which began a year into the Korean War, lasted two years due to the issue of prisoners of war (POWs), particularly concerning the Chinese prisoners. This paper aims to demonstrate how Chinese communist POWs’ decisions to go to Taiwan were actually due to the proactive efforts of the Republic of China (ROC) government. This paper investigates the activities of the ROC government in the conversion of Chinese communist POWs during the Korean War. Although it is impossible to identify all the individual reasons Chinese communist POWs chose to go to Taiwan, this research is able to substantiate the fact that the ROC government used various incentives to convince them to choose Taiwan. Examples of these ROC efforts include successful requests to the United Nations Command to send ROC interpreters to the POW camps, efforts to influence the atmosphere of the POW camps, and the infiltration of ROC secret agents into those camps. In the end, the Chinese communist POWs who chose to go to Taiwan were separated from their families and came to settle in their new home.