THE CUSTODIANS

With the ousting of Syngman Rhee, the task of ensuring that South Korea did not slip from autocracy into anarchy fell upon the republic's Acting President and its top soldier. Both are able, honest and widely respected. And both have had personal experience of the arrogant maladministration that brought South Korea to its present pass.

Acting President Huh Chung, 64, is a scholarly, energetic ex-journalist whose ability repeatedly brought him jobs in Rhee's government and whose principles repeatedly got him fired. As Rhee's first Transportation Minister, Huh (rhymes with "uh") ran Korea's railroads with what admirers called "American hustle," and as Minister of Social Welfare, he efficiently supervised distribution of relief supplies during the Korean war. After a brief spell as Acting Premier, he broke with Rhee in 1952 over the strong-arm tactics used to bulldoze the National Assembly into voting constitutional changes intended to ensure Rhee's re-election as President. Recalled to political office as mayor of Seoul in 1957, Huh was soon fired on the ground that during a U.S. trip, he had offered some mild suggestions for change in Rhee's Korea. When the Seoul riots broke fortnight ago, Huh was in Rhee's black book again as "pro-Japanese." Rhee hates the Japanese, and as head of a commission negotiating South Korea's raft of longstanding diplomatic disputes with Japan, Huh had been more conciliatory than Rhee considered proper.

Like Rhee, Huh is a Methodist and has close ties to the U.S.; he spent the better part of twelve years of exile in New York, and his elder child (a daughter) is currently doing graduate work at Northwestern. Blessed with an independent income from land, Huh belongs to no political party, and between government jobs devotes himself to reading and study. When Rhee finally stepped down last week, Huh argued that as Rhee's appointee (he had just returned to the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary), he should resign, too. Persuaded to stay on as caretaker chief of state, he insists that he will not be a candidate for either the presidency or the premiership.

General Song Yo Chan, 42, is a bull-chested (5 ft. 11 in., 215 lbs.) professional fighting man who boasts that "I have fought 200 battles and never lost one." A farmer's son who was conscripted by the Japanese army and served as a sergeant in the Japanese infantry during World War II, Song was one of the first officers commissioned in the Korean forces, rose in four years (1946-50) from second lieutenant to brigadier general. As commander of the R.O.K. army's crack Capital Division for most of the Korean war, he fought brilliantly all the way from the Pusan perimeter to the Yalu, earned from U.S. General James Van Fleet the nickname "Tiger." For Koreans his nickname took on new meaning last year when, after being named chief of staff, he set out to eradicate grafting by the R.O.K. army's underpaid officers. Before he was finished, he had cashiered 1,700 officers, including 15 generals.

Father of two small children, Song is so taciturn that during the last stalemated months of the Korean war, he gave Dwight Eisenhower one of the shortest briefings in military history: "We are ready to attack the enemy--who is over there." Song is a passionate believer in civilian supremacy, argues that, "If the military take over, our democracy will go and our fight against Communism is vain." Late last week, when Acting President Huh offered to make him Defense Minister, Song flatly declined.

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