Right Way to the Left

A dog-eared copy of the one-page North Korea Communist mouthpiece Chawng Lo (Right Way) turned up in the U.S. zone last week. From it, South Koreans, eager for news of their northern countrymen, learned of a two-day meeting in P'yongyang to plan a provisional government for the Soviet-occupied area. The self-government murmurs had strong overtones of the Internationale.

Chairman of the conference, Chawng Lo said, was Kim II Sung, "a 32-year-old hero" who appeared "in a Red Army uniform . . . proudly wearing medals received from the Russian Government." Chawng Lo reported: "All of Kim II Sung's bills passed unopposed." Delegates had set up an Interim Peoples Committee and voted a platform which included extermination of pro-Japanese and antidemocratic elements, confiscation of land, extermination of imperialistic ideas. "Plans were drafted," Chawng Lo proclaimed, "for the benefit of the human race."

In the U.S. zone skeptics called the provisional regime a "Soviet puppet," charged that Kim II Sung was an impostor trading on the name of a legendary Korean resistance leader.

Southern leftists too were throwing their weight around. A Communist-inspired "Battle Front Formation Convention" met in Seoul to denounce U.S. occupation measures. One speaker brought the house down with a report on World War II. Gist of the report: when Germany was near collapse in 1944, the U.S. jumped into the European war for spoils. After ineffectual skirmishes by U.S. troops on minor South Pacific islands, Russia staggered Japan with tremendous blows by the mighty Red Army.

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