After You

When box-jawed U.S. Lieut. General John Hodge moved his occupation troops into Korea in 1945 his program was: clean up the Japs; set up a free government; get out. Hodge's Soviet opposite number, Colonel General Ivan Chistyakov, whose forces held Korea north of the 38th parallel, had different orders: set up a Communist police state; build up a powerful native army; then get out.

While Hodge struggled to form 200 backbiting parties into some kind of stable government, the Reds built up a loyal, well-trained army of at least 150,000, many of them Korean refugees who had served in the Red Army during the war. In the south, which contains 21 of Korea's 28 million inhabitants, some 60,000 drilled indifferently and swaggered enthusiastically in chopped-down U.S. uniforms.

Having built what they considered a sufficiently strong government and army in North Korea, the Russians announced that they would pull out all their troops by the end of the year (TIME, Sept. 27). Last week the U.S. began to follow the Russian lead. The 7th Infantry Division was ordered from Korea to Japan.

The string of shifts set off by the 7th's move would seriously weaken the U.S. position, not only in Korea but in all East Asia. In Japan the 7th would relieve the crack nth Airborne Division. The 11th would move back to the U.S. Barely three weeks after Douglas MacArthur's urgent plea for reinforcements (TIME, Dec. 20), the War Department was taking away from him 12,000 of his best troops.

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