Relatively Clean

For the first time since South Korea be came a nation, Korean voters found no carbine-toting cops or hulking youth corpsmen around to "supervise" the vote. Of 1,532 candidates, only 50 dared openly to campaign as members of the onetime dominant Liberal Party of ex-President Syngman Rhee. But even this failed to appease the students still intoxicated with the sense of their own power, who seemed to think that mob rule was a good swap for Rhee repression. At Samchonpo, Yun-yang and Kumchon, student rowdies burned 44 ballot boxes. Explained one young student, stopped in the act of tossing a box into the flames: "We are afraid the Rhee Liberals might be winning."

One Ox, One Vote. On their side, the old Rhee supporters showed that they had yet to unlearn their old tricks. One wealthy ex-Liberal, running scared as an Independent, "loaned" teams of oxen to the farmers of his district, explaining: "If I am elected, you may keep them. But if I am defeated, I must take them back to pay off my creditors." Other candidates freely bought votes by folding money in campaign literature, and when the money dried up, by opening barrels of makkolli, one of the headiest of the home-brewed Korean rice wines.

When the votes were counted, the results proved a moderately encouraging victory for moderation. Of the 233 House of Representatives seats at issue, well over a two-thirds majority were won by the Democratic Party of former Vice President John M. Chang, whose defeat in a crooked election last March triggered the overthrow of Rhee. The Democrats also made heavy inroads in the Pusan factory districts, where the Socialists, running on a "recognize Red China" program, had high hopes.

Jockeying for Power. The full Assembly will pick the new President, with caretaker Premier Huh Chung the leading candidate. But under the new constitution, the Premier will be the real power. Public choice is still Chang, 60, a U.S.-educated lawyer and a Roman Catholic. But he is being challenged within his own party by Yoon Bo Sun, 62, an oldtime Korean aristocrat trained in geology and archaeology at Edinburgh University, who feels Chang is a Johnny-come-lately in the Democratic Party.

"But the premiership won't be any plum," said a Korean observer. In a population of 22 million, unemployment is close to 2,000,000. With Korean imports running 15 times exports and with half the national budget met by U.S. funds, the Democrats have promised to raise army pay 35% to calm the junior officers, who are still forcing senior officers to resign, and to give government clerks a 60% raise to discourage the taking of graft. Problem is where to find the money. Chang's men claim they could get it painlessly by confiscating the ill-gotten gains of Rhee's ministers. Privately, they admit such confiscations would be only a drop in the bucket. They would like to have the U.S. foot the bill, but the U.S. is more likely to reduce its aid than to increase it. Only alternative, claim Chang's strategists, is an inevitably painful reduction of the army from 630,000 to 400,000 men.

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