The Army Takes Over

The generals took over in South Korea last week, proclaiming their desire to wipe out corruption, inefficiency and Communism. The U.S., which had trained the crack Korean army and hand-picked its leaders, was surprised by the coup and bewildered in its response.

It was 3:30 a.m. when the Jeeps and trucks loaded with soldiers began rolling into Seoul. At the Han River bridge, six confused military police guards made the mistake of resisting and were shot on the spot. Columns of marines and paratroopers raced unopposed to the center of the city, surrounding government buildings, blocking intersections and firing into the air to frighten the populace.

Curfew & Censorship. One squad headed straight for the Bando Hotel to arrest Manhattan-educated Premier John M. Chang, whom the army expected to find asleep in his eighth-floor suite. But Chang and his family had slipped away a few minutes before, were already safely hidden at a friend's house. When dawn came, the coup was complete. Seoul seemed almost normal but for the heavy guards at every intersection and the orders blaring over the radio from the headquarters of peppery little Lieut. General Chang Do Yung, 38, chief of staff of the 600,000-man ROK army, who now declared himself "chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee." Proclaiming martial law, General Chang ordered the Cabinet arrested, halted all civil air flights, banned political parties, forbade meetings and decreed censorship for the newspapers.

The U.S. military commander on the spot was General Carter Magruder, chief of U.N. forces, whose command includes the South Korean army as well as all U.S. troops. U.S. embassy boss was Marshall Green, experienced, red-haired charge d'affaires in Seoul. Almost as soon as the sound of the junta's guns rattled Seoul's windows, both were out of bed and drafting public statements condemning the revolt and backing the government of Premier Chang. Neither waited to consult Washington. General Magruder urged that Korean armed forces chiefs "use their authority and influence to see that control is immediately turned back to the lawful governmental authorities.'' Added Diplomat Green: "I wish to make it emphatically clear that the United States supports the constitutional government."

The junta felt justifiably confident that General Magruder would not use the two American divisions under his command to contest the coup. When Magruder and Green arrived in midmorning to argue with General Chang and his four fellow junta chiefs, the Korean generals brushed off the Americans with a flat refusal to end the revolt.

The revolutionary committee's first communique pledged to "oppose Communism as its primary objective . . . root out corruption . . . solve the misery of the masses . . . transfer power to new and conscientious politicians as soon as our mission has been completed, and return to our original duties." General Chang, a North Korean who was drafted into the Japanese army and graduated from a Japanese military academy, is well known and popular among U.S. officers, who helped him rise to the top in the ROK army by arranging to send him to the U.S. for a year's study at the Command and General Staff College at Fort

Leavenworth in 1952. In Manhattan, General James A. Van Fleet, the former U.N. commander in Korea who had staked his faith in South Korea's fighting men and had been proved right, flatly endorsed Chang and his generals. "We have no stauncher allies," he said. "Let's keep them on our side." General Chang is a special favorite of Magruder himself.

Premier's Problems. Was General Chang the new boss? The man who planned the coup was not Chang but his powerful colleague on the junta, Major General Pak Chung Hi, 44. Reportedly, Pak's representatives went to Chang, told him that if he did not come to lead the coup, "we will have to kill you." Even as the uprising got under way, General Chang rushed off to see Magruder; for most of the first day, it was not certain whether Chang would lead the revolt or quell it.

Major General Pak was once an avowed Communist who helped organize an army revolt in 1948; he was sentenced to death by Syngman Rhee's officers but was released after reportedly undergoing a conversion and informing on the entire Communist network. Now vocally and violently antiCommunist, he rose to be the army's chief of operations. Disgusted with the corruption of Rhee's regime, General Pak is said to have planned a revolt early last year, but the student mobs that ousted Rhee beat him to it.

At first, Pak hoped that Premier John Chang, victor in South Korea's first honest elections, would sweep out the graft and inefficiency and rebuild the creaking Korean economy. Instead, corruption continued, and Premier Chang's bold economic plans made little progress. Heedless of the damage they were doing to South Korea's frail democracy, politicians selfishly fought for personal gain. Seoul's irresponsible newspapers exulted in their new freedom by jabbing at Premier Chang on every issue. President Posun Yun, supposedly a figurehead outside the political maelstrom, sniped openly at the struggling Premier.

The Angry Generals. Premier Chang had long been aware that the greatest threat to his regime was the huge army. Nevertheless he pushed ahead with his campaign promise to trim 200,000 men out of the 600,000-strong armed forces, whose maintenance takes over half of the entire South Korean budget. That angered the generals; General Magruder and visiting Pentagon brass declared their grave concern at the troop cuts.

To make matters worse, Premier Chang forced some prominent ROK officers into early retirement. But, lacking the crafty sophistication of Syngman Rhee, who used to reshuffle his officer corps with drastic regularity to make plots difficult, Chang left too many of his military opponents in their old jobs. When Plotter General Pak set his military revolt in motion last week, only 3,600 soldiers were needed to bring the government down and send Premier Chang into hiding.

Premier Chang proved to be no fighter. After two days in hiding, he turned up at the State Council building to surrender to General Chang. Then he went before the press to announce that he and his Cabinet had resigned, appealed to the nation to stand behind the new military regime. After the Premier's resignation came that of President Yun himself, who, following Korea's tradition of repentance after defeat, declared: "I regret that I made so little contribution to the nation that a military revolution has occurred ... I feel nothing but sorrow." But next day, the generals talked him into staying on the job.

What Next? Now the military chiefs could get down to the task of running the country. Announcing a new, isman Cabinet of army, navy, air force and marine officers, General Chang became Premier and Defense Minister as well. The junta was opposed by no one; with utter apathy or unconcern, the Korean people watched in silence.

The generals were promising a return to civilian rule, but had begun with a crackdown that lumped all liberals with the Communists in a drive against what it called "antistate organizations." More than 3,500 suspects considered to be potential Communists or "leftist hoodlums" were under arrest, and warnings went out to left-wing student groups to keep quiet or else. The censored press was forbidden to use blank spaces or blacked-out splotches that would show that censorship was in effect. The generals and their aides were largely untrained in civil administration, would probably have to turn to the previous civil servants for help. A day after the coup, U.S. economic aid officials in Seoul were back in business, dealing with the same Korean bureaucrats as before.

State Department officials in Washington were somewhat embarrassed that the

Seoul embassy had backed the wrong horse by its abrupt support of the ousted Premier. But in Seoul, General Chang stood before reporters in his combat fatigues to shrug it all off. "There should be no trouble at all as far as U.S. -Korean relations are concerned," said Chang. "Our armed forces in the past have had closer relations with U.S. authorities than any other Korean agency. Therefore I believe the U.S. Government will support us more positively than ever before."

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