Old Men Forget

FOREIGN NEWS

Gunfire rattled again last week through remote cities with names once painfully familiar to U.S. G.I.s -- Pusan, Kwangju, Taegu, Taejon, Seoul. Once again, as he had in 1950, South Korea's stubborn, prideful President Syngman Rhee, 85, stood with his back to the wall. But this time Rhee's opponents were not Commu nist invaders. They were South Korea's own eager, patriotic youngsters.

In a single, sudden impulse of youth, South Korea's high school and university students had appointed themselves the guardians of democracy. Their elders had stood by helplessly last March, when Rhee's musclemen flagrantly rigged the vice-presidential election to count out Vice President John M. Chang and "elect" Rhee's chosen heir, ailing Lee Ki Poong. But the students were less docile. Fortnight ago, their anger flared into rioting at the port city of Masan (TIME, April 25). In other cities, other students marched in demonstrations. One warm spring morning last week, it was Seoul's turn.

Briefcases & Bullets. Reported TIME Correspondent Alexander Campbell: "The enormous crowds lining Seoul's sidewalks clapped good-humoredly as rank upon rank of boys and girls marched along the city's main thoroughfares, sturdily swing ing their briefcases and singing patriotic songs. Not far from the presidential pal ace of Kyungmudae (which means man sion of courage and beauty), the students were halted by determined, heavily armed police. The students demanded that Rhee receive a delegation of three or four of their leaders to discuss new elections and to promise no more police intervention on university campuses. When the request was refused, the crowd again pushed forward. A tear-gas shell fell near the front rank of students and failed to explode. When a student moved forward to toss it back, a policeman shot him.

"At that, the whole mass charged forward--and ran into a hail of bullets that left several dead and dying. At this point, Seoul's 30,000 demonstrating students became partly an improvised army seeking weapons and partly a mob bent on destruction. While commandeered Jeeps and vans carried the wounded off to city hospitals, regiments of students, most of them still unbelievably clinging to their satchels full of books, continued to advance on the palace. By now, the building of the pro-government newspaper, Seoul Shinmun, was burning, and so was the headquarters of Rhee's bullyboy Anti-Communist Youth League. From behind the heavy gates of Lee Ki Poong's home, police guards were firing into the crowd. Outside the city hall, students were beating two policemen to death with lead pipes."

A Word to the Cops. By afternoon, Rhee called in Army Chief of Staff Lieut. General Song Yo Chan and placed Seoul under martial law. Rumbling into town with old Sherman tanks, the 15th ROK Infantry Division took over from the hated police. Genial, able General Song was firm, but his sympathies clearly lay with the students. "Call on me any time," he told a student delegation. As for the police, he warned bluntly: "Policemen found beating, torturing or abusing anyone will be dealt with under martial law."

Closing down all schools and bus lines and slapping on a 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, Song and his men rapidly reimposed order without once shooting to kill. But by the time the last rifle shots died away. 108 students were dead, and Seoul's hospitals were jammed with more than 700 wounded. From Pusan, Kwangju, Taegu and Taejon came news of other riots in which at least 22 more people had died.

A Blast from the Mike. As no amount of oratory could, the students' deaths dramatized the unhappy state to which headstrong old Syngman Rhee had brought his country. U.S. Secretary of State Herter, implicitly reminding Rhee that South Korea owes both its birth and continued existence to the U.S.. sharply deplored Rhee's resort to "repressive measures unsuited to a free democracy." urged him to "take necessary and effective action aimed at . . . preserving the secrecy of the ballot and preventing unfair discrimination against political opponents.''

The same evening U.S. Ambassador Walter McConaughy drove to Rhee's palace through gunfire and blackout to hammer Herter's point home. Unspoken, but clearly recognized by Rhee, was the possibility that unless his government mended its ways, President Eisenhower might not only cancel his recently scheduled trip to Korea but might even re-examine the question of the $200-$300 million in aid that the U.S. gives to South Korea annually.

In Korea itself, Rhee was faced with a nationwide wave of revulsion. Opposition Leader John Chang issued a list of ten demands on Rhee, including the immediate release of all arrested students and nullification of the March 15 elections. When Defense Minister Kim Chung Yul, speaking in the National Assembly, tried to justify the Seoul shootings by accusing the students of ''indescribable violence,'' he was torn bodily away from the microphone by raging members of Chang's Democratic Party.

A Wife's Plea. At first, Rhee took refuge in his prestige as "the father of Korean independence." In a public statement on the riots, he declared plaintively: "It is almost unbelievable that any element of the patriotic Korean people, to whom I have dedicated my life, could act in such a way." In the traditional Oriental manner, all the members of Rhee's Cabinet resigned "for failing in our duty to the nation."

But the time when the Korean public would accept gestures in lieu of performance had passed. Summoned to Rhee's office, six of Korea's most respected statesmen all gave him the same advice: Lee Ki Poong, whose fraudulent election had made him the prime target of popular hatred, must resign as Vice President-elect.

From the sanctuary of one of Seoul's private hospitals, Lee fought a stubborn delaying action. Rushing off to Kyung-mudae, Madame Lee joined forces with her great friend, Rhee's Austrian wife Francesca, and together the two women spent a tearful hour begging Rhee not to insist on Lee's resignation. But the pressure on Rhee steadily increased. Ambassador McConaughy came through the tanks, machine guns and barbed wire around the palace to deliver another reminder of U.S. concern. At Inchon, 25,000 people turned out to demonstrate--with no violence from the chastened police--for new elections. Late in the week, despite the fact that his term still had four months to run. Lame Duck John Chang resigned as Vice President with the avowed intention of encouraging both Rhee and Lee Ki Poong to follow his example.

Hospital Call. Momentarily shaken out of his conviction that his troubles were all the work of "Communist agents," Rhee began to talk vaguely of re-establishing the office of Premier (which he abolished in 1954) and of reducing his own functions as President to those of a symbolic chief of state. But when his long-awaited announcement of plans finally came, it contained only token concessions. Said Rhee: "I have come to think that as President it will be better for me to divorce myself from the [Liberal] Party and seek to serve the nation solely as its chief executive and the head of its administration."

Lee Ki Poong. who had nervously announced that he was "considering" resigning, now declared that, though he planned to retire eventually, "many" of his colleagues had begged him to stay on for a while. Lee's strong card seemed to be that if he resigned, as well as Chang, the government would be legally obliged to hold new vice-presidential elections--a loss of face Rhee was not yet ready to accept.

Syngman Rhee had clung to power too stubbornly and manipulated Korea's constitution to his own advantage too often for anyone to be very impressed by his mere promise "to correct the mistakes of the past." At week's end Rhee made his first trip out of the palace since the riots, to pay a tearful hospital call on some of the wounded students. The crowds that had always applauded him in the past now stared in stolid silence.

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