The axe murder incident (Korean: 판문점 도끼만행사건, 板門店도끼蠻行事件,도끼殺人事件) was the killing of two United States Army officers by North Korean soldiers on August 18, 1976, in the Joint Security Area (JSA) located in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which forms the de facto border between North and South Korea.
The killings and the response three days later (Operation Paul Bunyan) heightened tensions between North and South Korea as well as their respective allies, the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and the United States.
The incident is also known as the hatchet incident and the poplar tree incident and "The Tree Trimming Incident" because the object of the conflict was a poplar tree standing in the JSA.
Read more about Axe Murder Incident: Background, Operation Paul Bunyan
Famous quotes containing the words axe, murder and/or incident:
“I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice,—once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe,... if it was dull, it was at least hung true.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Don’t pay any attention to Ah Ling. He has a mania for quoting Confucius. And Charlie Chan.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Mrs. Houghland, Murder by Television, reassuring her friends after the houseboy has pointed out a sign of ill omen (1935)
““It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.... I would call your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)