ABSTRACT
To the west, Eighth Army, in considerably more disorder than X Corps in the northeast, retreated overland southward. On 5 December Pyongyang was evacuated and the city left in flames, but there is no evidence that the UNC deliberately fired the capital. Although the DPRK capital is an inland city, much of the evacuation was nonetheless waterborne, by way of the Taedong River. There were numerous parallels with the Hungnam evacuation. Tens of thousands of refugees followed the UN forces. Some 30,000 proceeded south by sailboat. Communist pressure was even less than at Hungnam; in fact, after 30 November no Eighth Army trooper had even sighted a Chinese soldier! Much of the equipment hurriedly destroyed at Pyongyang could have been saved had the evacuation been less precipitous. But the prime concern had become the preservation of the UNC troops, and for that goal North Korea and UN equipment there could be readily abandoned.
