the uncomfortable task of clearing these explosives while the 1st Battalion passed through and occupied high ground immediately northeast of the town. Capture of Seoul By the time Hongcheon fell, General Ridgway discerned that the PVA/KPA high command had decided to abandon Seoul. The first sign appeared on 12 March when aerial observers flying over the PVA/KPA's Han River positions between Seoul and the 25th Division's bridgehead saw a large number of troops moving northwest out of that area. Patrols from the 3rd Division, which held positions along the Han opposite, crossed the river on the night of the 12th and found shoreline positions vacant. On the following night 3rd Division patrols moved more than above the Han without making contact. Patrols from both the 3rd Division and ROK 1st Division crossed the Han during the afternoon of 14 March. One from the 3rd Division discovered that PVA/KPA forces had vacated an important defensive position on Hill 348, the peak of a prominent north-south ridge east of Seoul. Nearer the city, another patrol moved as far north as the Seoul-Chuncheon road without contact; a third found that Hill 175, one of the lower peaks of South Mountain hugging Seoul at its southeast edge, also was vacant. Five patrols from the ROK 1st Division entered Seoul itself. One moved all the way through the western portion of the city to the gate on Route 1 while another reached the Capitol Building near the city center and raised the South Korean flag from the dome. None of the patrols received fire or sighted PVA/KPA troops. In continuing to search the city on the 15th, the ROK discovered only a few KPA deserters who had been away from their units too long to provide information of value. Outside Seoul, a patrol from the Belgian Battalion, recently attached to the 3rd Division, checked the ground along the eastern edge of the city without making contact; two companies of ROK troops moved unopposed through the ground just west of the city; and still farther west, an ROK patrol crossed the Han and moved more than north before running into PVA/KPA fire. Aerial observers saw no PVA/KPA activity immediately above the northern limits of Seoul but observed extensive defensive preparations and troops disposed in depth east and west of Route 3 beginning at a point to the north, roughly halfway between Seoul and Uijongbu. Assured that