The PX Affair

Where U.S. troops encamp overseas for any length of time, two things often occur: coveted, cut-rate PX goods appear in the local black market, and the American boys find their way into the hearts of the local girls. South Korea, with its 50,000 G.I.s, is no exception: some $90,000 in U.S. goods vanishes monthly into Korea's flourishing black market, and in Korea no fewer than 575 Korean girls are wives of U.S. servicemen.

The Eighth Army's General Carter B. (for Bowie) Magruder apparently concluded that there was a connection between these two facts, and so, a fortnight ago in Seoul, he posted "new policies [that] restrict logistical support and various privileges to authorized dependents of personnel who are on a service-directed accompanied tour of 24 months." This was hard enough to understand even for people brought up in English. But Korean wives, most of whom are married to G.I.s serving standard, 13-month tours, soon got the idea: henceforth they were to be excluded from use of the PX. An Eighth Army spokesman was tactless enough to put the point intelligibly: "Some dependents have been abusing PX privileges through black-marketing"--and with that, the Korean wives were up in arms.

Nagging Wives. "Sure, we sometimes sell PX goods on the black market," admitted one. "But doesn't everybody?" Another Korean wife voiced what most of them believed was really behind it all: "The truth is that the American wives dislike us very much. They are race-conscious, and complain they have to stand alongside us for service at PX counters . . . Those who are married to high officers nagged away at their husbands to have something done about us."

U.S. wives were quick to retort. Said one heatedly: "Some of those Korean marriages are just sordid commercial arrangements. Many G.I.s who marry Korean girls never attempt to have their wives follow them when they leave Korea. The marriage was just a black-market partnership in the first place." A PX official backed up part of her complaint: "I have seen a Korean wife walk out laden with packages--and be back within an hour to buy more."

Moral Support. But if, in fact, Korean wives often did take their purchases straight to the side streets of Seoul, Pusan and Taegu, which are lined with black markets whose vendors do not even bother to remove the PX labels from their wares, they were not the only source of supply. As one Korean put it: "Much of the stuff never gets to the PX in the first place. It goes straight to the black market from the warehouse." Sometimes it never even gets to the warehouse; last week a truckload of 84 cases of U.S. butter valued at $3,200 was hijacked from the Pusan pier, and melted away into other hands before MPs could catch up with it.

The Korean G.I. brides, aroused at losing PX privileges, first scheduled a street demonstration, decided instead to send four of their number to the American embassy. Later they met with Eighth Army officials, all the while getting stout moral support from Syngman Rhee's government. Last week the Eighth Army beat a retreat, restored PX privileges to Korean wives "pending further study." "Had General Magruder not revoked the order," said Syngman Rhee's Korean Republic, "the naive would have believed, once again, that the Americans were here not as friends and partners, but as masters."

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