Christmas Eve in Seoul

The Republic of Korea's hard-boiled old President Syngman Rhee dislikes opposition, newspaper criticism and elections --especially elections when, as recently, they have run against his Liberal Party. Not only has he been plagued by all three but also by a more serious menace: growing Communist infiltration and espionage from North Korea.

In a typical slam-bang effort to solve all his problems, 83-year-old President Rhee devised an omnibus security law that opponents, including the bar association, said was so loosely drawn that it could be used to silence all political protest. In a desperate effort to block the bill, 80 Assemblymen of the opposition Democratic Party barricaded themselves in the Assembly chamber for six days.

On Christmas Eve lowering clouds hung over Seoul and gusts of bone-chilling rain lashed the streets, drenching the policemen who stood guard with slung carbines outside the Assembly. Inside, the sit-down strike continued. Opposition Assemblymen slept beside their desks. In a seat near the rostrum, tiny Park Soon Chun, the only woman member of the Democratic Party in the Assembly, tiredly wiped her glasses.

Trucks filled with police and plainclothesmen suddenly roared into the street, drew up at the Assembly entrance. Moving at the double, the police burst through the flimsy barricades and charged the Assemblymen. A tangle of fighting, cursing men rolled on the floor or tumbled over desks, chairs and other writhing bodies. Park Soon Chun went down from a blow to the jaw. One by one, bleeding and still struggling, the sit-down strikers were hauled from the chamber and down the corridors, past jeering, pro-government Assemblymen of the Liberal Party. Eight had to be sent to the hospital.

With the opposition out of the way, the pro-government group hurriedly called a plenary session and passed the security-law revisions bill by a unanimous vote of 128-0. For good measure, they rammed through 22 other bills, ranging from the 1959 budget to a bill that decrees that all mayors of South Korean cities, towns and villages will in the future be appointed by the government, not elected. The press was still free enough for the Seoul newspaper Donga Ilbo to declare: "In Korea, democracy died today."

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