Turnabout

The 30 prisoners, roped together in groups of five, filed last week into a dilapidated Seoul courtroom. In a wide plaza two blocks away, a sweltering crowd of 30,000 grim-faced Koreans listened to the proceedings over loudspeakers set up for their benefit. Cordons of police and barriers of barbed wire kept the vengeful crowd away from the courtroom itself.

The judge asked the first defendant his name. "Choi In Kyu." Age? "Forty-two." Occupation? "Unemployed." Assets? Choi answered: "Since the mobs of demonstrators burned down my house last April, I now possess properties worth only from $40,000 to $60,000." To the listening Koreans, Choi In Kyu needed no introduction. As Home Minister in ex-President Syngman Rhee's Cabinet, U.S.-educated Choi had controlled the much-feared Korean national police. Standing trial with him were nine other Rhee ministers, the former national police director, other top police officials, bankers and 13 chieftains of Rhee's discredited Liberal Party.

The prosecutor charged that the defendants had stuffed ballot boxes, raised election funds through extortion, forced 100,000 government workers to campaign for Rhee's candidates, fabricated results to suit themselves. In cases where overenthusiastic field workers turned in results showing 90% or more in favor of Rhee's ticket, provincial governors and police chiefs were ordered to reduce the vote count so that Rhee would get a more plausible 80%, his running mate Lee Ki Poong a few percentage points less. Choi pleaded guilty to five charges, admitting that he had ordered ballot boxes stuffed with up to 40% of the total expected vote even before the polls opened, had local officials throw out any poll watchers sent by the opposition party, and had directed the rigging of the final count.

Choi and his co-defendants expected little mercy from the judges and prosecutors they faced. As former Rhee appointees, the jurists are eager to channel public hatred away from themselves and onto the prisoners. Since violation of the election laws is punishable by a maximum of only five years at hard labor, the caretaker Huh Chung government has additionally charged top defendants such as Choi with violating the National Security Law by "attempting to form an unconstitutional government through illegal elections"--a law which, ironically, Rhee had designed as a club to intimidate his own opponents. The maximum penalty: death.

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