Death for Doubters

When a South Korean military junta toppled the civilian government of Premier John M. Chang last May, a squad of revolutionaries raced to the palatial home of Army Chief of Staff General Chang Do Yung and bluntly told him: "Join the coup or we will kill you." After thinking it over for several hours, General Chang reluctantly agreed, became Premier and front man for the tough reform regime of General Park Chung Hee. Scarcely six weeks later, accused of obstructing the revolution. General Chang was put under house arrest.* Last week, dressed in the shabby white robe of a common laborer, he was sentenced to the gallows by a five-man military court in Seoul.

Eyes closed, slumped in the dock, Chang, 39, listened for almost two hours while the judges took turns reading the opinion. The defendant, they said, was "a master of flattery, inveigled personal advance and promotion by opportunistic guiles, an attitude not worthy of an officer in uniform." Among the specific charges: on the eve of the coup, Chang had ordered two companies of military police outside Seoul to fire on advancing columns of revolutionary troops. He tipped off Premier John Chang to the plot, enabling him to hide out for two days. When informed of the coup by General Park on the telephone. General Chang told him he was drunk, snapped: "Go back home to bed." To U.S. officials. Chang described the revolt as merely "a riot." Only when the coup clearly proved to be successful did Chang join the winning side as "a sly, base opportunist." But later, the judges held, instead of backing General Park, Chang undermined him and tried to organize a countercoup.

In court, Chang angrily denied most of the accusations, but frankly explained his early petulance: at first he had considered the revolt just "one of those troublesome upheavals of young colonels demanding the resignation of corrupt generals and promotion for themselves." He expressed "regret that my doubts caused impediments to the revolution." For having harbored the same doubts. Chang's former secretary, Colonel Lee Hoi Yung, was also sentenced to death. On similar charges, 13 other defendants, including two original members of Park's junta, drew prison terms ranging from five years to life. Nine others were acquitted.

Whether Chang hangs is up to South Korea's tough ruler. General Park, who reviews all final verdicts of capital punishment. So far, 16 men have been sentenced to death on charges of opposing last year's revolution; seven of them have gone to the scaffold in Seoul's bleak So-daemun prison.

*Ex-Premier John Chang was kept under house arrest for six months after the coup and released last November, just before General Park's visit to Washington.

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