Heavy Stone

No matter where a man stands in Korea he can see a mountain. The Koreans say: "You cannot sit in the valley and see the new moon set." Last week, in Seoul, Korea's aging new President Syngman Rhee made the same point with another proverb: "You cannot expect to lift a heavy stone without getting red in the face." His speech was part of a celebration of the return of national independence to two-thirds of Korea's 30 million people and one half of its land. In Seoul, the world's second largest bell* welcomed Tai Han Min Kook--the Republic of Korea. With General Douglas MacArthur in the reviewing stand, 10,000 soldiers marched past, and tore off their constabulary insignia to symbolize their conversion into a Korean army. But Korea's heavy stone remained; Russian forces still occupied North Korea.

In the 1945 Moscow agreement, Russia, the U.S. and Britain promised to restore Korean self-government in due course. They divided the country at the 38th parallel, thus impoverishing both north and south. The Russians had forced North Koreans to boycott the U.N. supervised elections which made Rhee President, and currently were cooking a Soviet-style one-name-per-office election of a puppet government.

When Japan seized the country in 1905, the pretext was that Korea was a "Russian dagger pointed at Japan's heart." As long as it held North Korea the Russian hand would continue to grasp the dagger's handle. This week Rhee asked U.S. occupation forces to stay on "until the danger from the north lessens."

* The world's largest bell (200 tons) is in Moscow's Kremlin. It fell and cracked in 1737, was never rehung, and never rung again.

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