Over to You, Gentlemen

To all outward appearances, South Korea's ruling military junta has wielded iron-fisted control over the country since it seized power in a lightning coup nearly two years ago. Under Strongman General Park Chung Hee, the government stifled all opposition; newspapers were gagged, and 4,000 known political opponents of the regime were forbidden to criticize it in public. But Park has been less successful in quelling disaffection within his own junta. Last week the wrangling was out in the open, threatening to plunge South Korea into yet another full-scale crisis.

Snooper Boss. Park's generals became openly restive soon after his decision to restore civilian political rule (TIME, Dec. 28), at least in name. In fact, junta members planned merely to swap their khaki for mufti and continue to run the country; Park himself was the leading candidate for the presidency. This pleasant prospect was shattered last January when Brigadier General Kim Chong Pil, husband of Park's niece and boss of the dreaded Central Intelligence Agency, quit the C.I.A. in order to grab control of the regime's civilian political organization, the Democratic-Republican Party. With Park's tacit approval, Kim, whose 30,000 snoopers had kept tabs on anything and anyone the junta might distrust--including members of the junta--infiltrated the party's power positions with 1,200 of his former C.I.A. agents.

Junta members objected to Kim's power grab as a blatant attempt to cut them out of the lion's share of the spoils. When they insisted that Park fire Kim from the party leadership, Park retaliated by sacking four of Kim's bitterest foes from the junta. But the four, all high-ranking officers, threatened to plunge South Korea into civil war unless Park brought Kim to heel. "The entire army is against you," one officer told Park. "You cannot win."

Failed Objective. Park finally capitulated. He forced Kim to resign his party post, last week sent him on a 50-day foreign inspection trip as his "ambassador plenipotentiary." No sooner had Kim left than investigators began exploring rumors that he had used his powerful C.I.A. job to make a stock market killing and to mulct kickbacks from government contractors. Before 3,000 screaming politicians in Seoul's Citizens Hall, Park announced grimly that he was bowing out of the presidential race. "I cannot help admitting." he said, "that the revolutionary government has failed completely in achieving its political objective--the emergence of new political personalities."

Certainly. Park's withdrawal and Kim's fall from grace failed to turn up any promising new political leaders. The junta-controlled Democratic-Republican Party is in floundering disarray, while the three other major civilian parties, which are also riven by internal dissension, lack any broad base of popular support. Thus, few South Koreans expect that Park will remain long in the wings. With inflation rampant and unemployment at a record high, man)' politicians suspect that Park is deliberately saddling them with chaos, that in his own good time, he may once again "save" the country.

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