Holding Action

Intoxicated by a vision of democracy that equates liberty with license, South Korea's young people last week pushed their nation ever closer to anarchy. In Seoul, where the crime rate has quadrupled since April's revolution, the students of 30 schools were out on strike. In Pusan, 1,000 brawling university students smashed up the offices of the daily Pusan Ilbo to show their displeasure with a story condemning student demonstrations. And in the port city of Mokpo, 500 tax-hating merchants discovered that while they had been sacking the local revenue office, their own shops had been burned down by 1,000 shrieking stevedores, enraged by alleged "profiteering."

Room at the Top. Prime targets for assault were the chastened army command and the caretaker government of Acting President Huh Chung. Outraged that Huh had arranged Hawaiian exile for fallen President Syngman Rhee (TIME, June 6), student mobs marched in Taegu and Seoul last week, chanting "Huh Chung, quit!" Answered Huh: "I could not refuse this unfortunate old man a passport. Besides, I thought his departure would help clear up rumors of counterrevolution."

Cynically fostering an army purge are many of South Korea's 3,700 youthful lieutenant colonels and colonels, who make $63 monthly or less, and would like to see some vacancies at the top--where, as some of them candidly admit, the opportunities for graft are better. Posturing heroically on street corners, they charge the generals with everything from taking bribes from draft evaders to delivering the vote of entire ROK army divisions to the Rhee ticket in last March's fraudulent elections. Counters U.S. General Carter B. Magruder, who as U.N. commander is responsible for South Korea's defenses against the Communist North: "No military force can tolerate having senior officers forced out of service by junior officers without completely losing its effectiveness." As for "irregularities in the past," he adds, "those same junior officers maintained silence or even participated." But last week, pressure from below forced the resignation of the chairman of the ROK joint chiefs of staff, and a "reshuffle" of 50 other general officers was threatened.

Modest Aim. Rhee's old civilian hierarchy had it tougher. Eight of Rhee's eleven Cabinet ministers were indicted last week on charges of election fraud, and also in jail or under questioning were a Supreme Court judge, two former police directors, two bank governors, three provincial governors, an ex-mayor of Seoul and 21 other high-ranking officials of Rhee's Liberal Party. Former Defense Minister Shin Sung Mo, accused of involvement in political assassinations, fell dead of a stroke in the midst of his interrogation. In the National Assembly, 104 out of 138 Liberal members declared that they were now independents "in the spirit of the revolution." and all across the country, police stations organized "public hearing committees," where grievances, real or imagined, could be aired against the old regime.

President Huh's modest aim is to maintain a semblance of public order and to keep the discredited Assembly alive long enough to write a new constitution and dissolve for elections. So far Huh has gotten his way with the Assembly by threatening to resign if balked, a device that has worked chiefly because nobody else wants to assume his thankless job. But whether it will continue to work is anybody's guess. Says one Korean moderate nervously: "If the Assembly dissolves before the new constitution becomes law, there will be no authority left in this country but the squabbling army."

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