Problem in Division

Under U.N. supervision last week, U.S.-occupied South Korea had its first free general election in its 4,000-year history. Communist threats of disruptive violence did not materialize on the scale expected; only 35 people were killed in election disorders. Nor did the Communist boycott significantly diminish the total vote; 92% of South Korea's eight million registered voters cast ballots. But in one forecast, pre-election dopesters were proved right. Tenacious, septuagenarian Syngman Rhee was confirmed as Korea's No. 1 political leader and its probable new chief of state.

Candidates of his National Association for the Rapid Realization of Korean Independence will fill at least 54 of the 200 seats in the National Assembly. But some 60 more Rhee followers were elected on "no party" tickets, enough to give him a working majority in the Assembly. The rest of the Assembly will be divided among other right-wing and splinter parties, only three seats going to left-wing (nonCommunist) candidates.

Although balding, slow-spoken, obstinate Dr. Rhee has been branded a "reactionary" by Korean Communists and a "rightist" by some U.S. journalists, his program would be too radical for most U.S. citizens. He has proposed: 1) nationalization of heavy industry, mines, forests, utilities, banks and transportation; 2) redistribution among small farmers of large estates and confiscated Japanese lands; 3) a planned economy; 4) a soak-the-rich tax program with total exemptions for poorer classes.

But in divided Korea social reforms would not be the new government's biggest or most immediate problem. A bigger problem was division itself. In North Korea, Soviet occupation had created a puppet Communist government with an army of more than 100,000 equipped with Soviet guns, vehicles and even a few aircraft. Communist Puppet Dictator Kim Il Sung could use those forces to "unify" Korea whenever occupation troops withdrew.

Kim Il Sung even had some things he could do in the meantime. From power plants in industrial North Korea comes most of the electricity consumed in the south. Last week he announced that, since South Korea was delinquent in paying its light bill, he was turning off the current.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.