The Long, Long Siege

Horns blaring raucously, swarms of cars and taxis swirl madly around the South Gate, an old entryway into the raffish, jostling metropolis of Seoul, South Korea. Throngs of Korean, American, European and Japanese businessmen pile into cabarets and assorted pleasure domes. Then, just before midnight, the pleasure seekers rush home to beat the midnight curfew, and the lights start winking out. A few miles away, villagers desert quiet country lanes for tile-or thatch-roofed cottages. And a few miles beyond that, perhaps an hour's drive from the teeming capital and its 6.5 million people, U.S. and South Korean soldiers anxiously scan the dark, austere terrain of the Demilitarized Zone. All along the 150-mile-long DMZ, from concrete-hardened bunkers or on tense patrols, they watch through the night for infiltrators, saboteurs or commandos from the Communist North.

To Americans especially, the elements are painfully familiar: a country divided since World War II into implacably hostile sides, one Communist and the other capitalist; a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two; a long and bitter history of skirmishes, provocations, threats and commando raids that could culminate in an all-out war. This is not Viet Nam, however, but that other Asian country where Asians and Americans have fought and died since World War II: Korea.

Between 1950 and 1953, a conflict raged across the Utah-sized peninsula that left as many as 4 million dead or wounded, including 157,530 American soldiers, and came perilously close to bringing the U.S. and China into full-scale war. It was 25 years ago this week that a massive North Korean invasion force, supplied and encouraged by the Soviet Union, swept across the DMZ and threatened to run the South's defenders right off the peninsula. On both sides of the 38th parallel, which divides the country, Koreans preparing to note the anniversary of the conflict do so with more fear and uncertainty than they have felt in many years.

War Weary. Particularly in the strongly anti-Communist South, there is growing anxiety about the rapidly changing situation in Asia. The most important factor, of course, is the final U.S. withdrawal from South Viet Nam, where 50,000 Korean soldiers fought in the late 1960s. Now South Koreans are asking themselves:

1) Will the dictatorial and ambitious Kim Il Sung, absolute ruler of the North, be encouraged by the Communist triumph in Viet Nam to attempt another war of conquest in Korea?

2) If so, will a war-weary U.S., which still maintains 42,000 soldiers in the country, come to the aid of the South as it did 25 years ago?

Most U.S. analysts and, privately, many South Korean officials doubt that the North Koreans will try a massive frontal assault against the South. Moreover, despite some resemblances, South Korea is vastly different from South Viet Nam. It is a cohesive country with a strong government, a booming economy and powerful, well-equipped armed forces. While there is internal opposition to the often repressive measures of President Park Chung Hee, there is nothing remotely resembling civil war; even the most outspoken dissidents, in fact, loathe the Communist monolith in Pyongyang, and North Korean infiltrators are almost invariably turned in by citizens to the South's security forces.

Even so, since the fall of Saigon, American officials have gone out of their way to reassure Seoul that the U.S. will stand by its 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty with South Korea. Last week, addressing the Japan Society in New York, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pointedly asserted that the U.S. was "resolved to maintain the peace and security of the Korean peninsula." Added Kissinger: "This is of crucial importance to Japan and to all of Asia."

In recent months there have been a number of unsettling signs. The Seoul government has found and sealed off two tunnels running from North Korea into the southern half of the 2.5-mile-wide DMZ, one of the tunnels 6 ft. high and 6 ft. wide. Even more unnerving to Seoul has been North Korean Leader Kim Il Sung's itinerary since the Communist victory in Viet Nam. Kim made highly publicized trips to China, Rumania and Yugoslavia, in what Seoul sees as an effort to drum up support for another military adventure in the South.

Pyongyang is widely expected to achieve one important propaganda success next fall, a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for an end to the U.N. mandate in Korea under which the American troops are stationed south of the DMZ. Washington will keep the American forces in place no matter what happens at the U.N., since only the Security Council, where the U.S. has a veto, can actually abolish the command. There is speculation that the U.S. will agree to discuss the removal of its troops from under the U.N. command structure before a vote is taken in the General Assembly. In either case, the resulting propaganda gains for Pyongyang would be an unwanted sign to Seoul of the extent to which the hated North has gained support throughout the world (see story page 44).

Most serious of all is the fact that more than 1 million heavily armed, well-trained troops are arrayed on both sides of the DMZ: 625,000 in the South and 467,000 in the North (see map page 40). The Korean forces, combined with huge Soviet air and naval installations in Vladivostok, just 40 miles from the border, with perhaps 1.5 million Soviet and Chinese troops facing off at the Manchurian border and with a lethal U.S. nuclear arsenal on Okinawa, put the Korean peninsula at the center of what may well be the most intensively militarized region in the world. The very existence of these enormous armed forces, in conjunction with the profound antagonism generated by three decades of division, increases the danger that any misstep could lead to war.

The Korean peninsula has always been a key to the stability of Northeast Asia. It is of vital concern to the Japanese, with over $1.5 billion worth of investments on the peninsula and the enduring feeling that Korea is "a dagger pointing at the heart of Japan." U.S. strategists, looking toward the post-Viet Nam era, are already talking about a Northeast Asia defense line, anchored in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. In all three countries, the U.S. has strong economic interests backed by formal mutual defense treaties.

The atmosphere of detente will undoubtedly lead both China and the Soviet Union to discourage military adventurism by Kim Il Sung. While Kim was in Peking, his hosts stressed that their "resolute support" of the Korean people was actually for "the independent and peaceful reunification" of Korea. It was an unmistakable message to Kim that Peking does not want a renewed Korean War. In fact, the Chinese are so concerned about stability in the region that high-level Peking officials have broadly hinted--to U.S. visitors, among others--that they are not anxious for American forces to leave East Asia. The Soviets were at least as discouraging. In his recent travels, Kim conspicuously omitted the Soviet Union; according to senior Soviet experts on Asia, Moscow did not want him to visit at the present time.

Industrial Takeoff. The greatest obstacle to Kim is the strength of South Korea itself. In the quarter century since the last war, Seoul has, except for airpower, reversed the military situation that existed in 1950 when Pyongyang had superior forces. The South has also surpassed the North in virtually every other aspect of life, especially the economy. South Korea has sustained one of the highest annual growth rates in the world--10%--since 1964. That is a long way from the days just after the Korean War, when the primitive rice-growing economy was shattered and the population on the verge of starvation.

Today Korea seems ready for a genuine industrial takeoff. Factory chimneys and television aerials crowd the skylines of industrial areas like Suwon, Chonan, Taegu and Inchon. Mountains of West Virginia coal are piled up at Pohang on the southeast coast, where 10,000 employees are producing steel or building plants for what will be the world's largest integrated steelworks. Farther south at Ulsan, the rocky coastline is broken by the giant hulls of 230,000-ton supertankers taking shape at ultramodern yards. South Korea's G.N.P., $17.2 billion, is about the same as Greece's, and per capita G.N.P. for its 33.5 million citizens is $513, v. $129 after the Korean War.

If industry is growing, so is agriculture; since 1965 there has been an impressive 3% yearly increase in crop output. Mechanization has not yet made much headway, and work in the fields is as backbreaking as it has been for centuries. "For years the West has had an urban preoccupation," says a senior South Korean official, sounding vaguely Maoist. "Yet in modern Asian history it has been the peasantry which has been the moving force. We have tilted the allocation of resources toward the countryside."

This rapid economic growth has exacted a high social cost. For one thing, it is based in part on very cheap labor. The average Korean worker receives a starting pay of about only $45 a month, and for that he has to work six days a week and often more than ten hours a day. There has also been a degree of profiteering by corrupt officials, though not an excessive amount compared with some other countries in Asia. In any case, despite these inequities, almost everybody has benefited from Korea's economic growth and, as TIME Correspondent William Stewart reports from Seoul, there is an expectation of still better things to come.

Time to Relax. "There is a ready cheerfulness," Stewart cables, "quite distinct from Japanese reserve or Chinese reticence. Koreans are open, forthcoming and demanding. And while they tear down and rebuild, they also live comfortably among the signs and customs of 2,000 years. The grounds of Seoul's Kyongbok Palace in late spring are rich with blossoms. Korean men still like to relax and discuss the business of the day at a Kisaeng party, the Korean equivalent of a geisha soiree. Less contrived and artful than its Japanese counterpart, a Kisaeng party is a time to sing, dance, talk and relax."

To a great extent, the Korean economic success is a personal monument to the country's flinty President Park. Rapid growth did not really begin until about 1962, when Park's government instituted the first of the country's five-year development plans and began to receive huge amounts of foreign investment capital, the majority from Japan. Until then, Korea had stagnated under the ineffectual, if autocratic rule of aging President Syngman Rhee. Overthrown in 1960 by spontaneous, nationwide student demonstrations, Rhee was replaced for a brief period by a truly democratic regime led by President Yun Po Sun. But Yun's government proved incapable of maintaining public order in the face of continued demonstrations and the inability of squabbling politicians to decide on a national policy. In 1961 the government was ousted in a bloodless coup by Park, then a general in the Korean army, and a loyal band of 250 fellow officers.

The son of a peasant, Park was educated in a rigidly disciplinarian Japanese military academy in the pre-1945 years when Japan was still the colonial ruler of Korea. Profoundly influenced by Japan's passionate prewar brand of patriotism, Park transformed it into a fervent allegiance to Korea. He joined the new Korean army in 1946 and enjoyed a swift rise, interrupted only once, in 1948; ironically, for so militant an antiCommunist, he was tried and acquitted of being a Communist agent.

Social Control. As Korea's uncontested strongman, Park believed from the beginning that without certain Eastern "modifications," Western democracy could only cause "indigestion" in Asia. In terms of the economy, this meant government encouragement of industry through such devices as underwriting foreign loans to business. It also involved strict supervision of labor to keep wages low and a heavy reliance on the powerful Korean Central Intelligence Agency (K.C.I.A.) as an instrument of social control. Founded in 1961 and employing an estimated 35,000 people, the K.C.I.A. has gained a reputation for brutality that, to judge from its victims, seems richly deserved.

It is this tendency toward totalitarianism that now threatens to undermine Korea's economic achievement. Until about two years ago, Park was careful to rule in strict adherence to the constitution. He served as President for three four-year terms, winning elections that were considered reasonably fair. But after the 1971 balloting, when Opposition Candidate Kim Dae Jung won a surprising 46% of the vote, Park became discernibly more dictatorial.

In 1972 Park declared martial law; then he proposed a drastic constitutional amendment called Yushin (Revitalization), which formalized his absolute power. Yushin freed the President from the "vagaries of politics" by eliminating popular presidential elections. Instead, a kind of electoral college was set up with 2,500 members; Park was empowered to fill one-third of the 219-seat National Assembly with those members of the electoral college whom he favored. An extraordinary 91% of South Koreans voted in favor of the new amendment, a suspiciously high majority in view of the fact that nearly half of the electorate had voted against Park in 1971. "What else could they have done?" fumes Kim Dae Jung. "Park had guns on them all at the time."

Tokyo Kidnapping. Park used his enhanced powers to crack down even harder on his political opposition. Kim Dae Jung, who continued hyperbolically to brand Park an "Asiatic edition of Hitler," was abducted in broad daylight by the K.C.I.A. from a hotel room in Tokyo and spirited back to Seoul. Kim's kidnaping infuriated the Japanese, whose sovereignty had been crassly violated.

Last year Park ordered a massive swoop on his critics throughout the country. No fewer than 168 of them were found guilty of various antigovernment activities. Some were sentenced to death, including former President Yun Po Sun, who was accused of giving money to support student protests. Eventually the death sentences were rescinded and most political prisoners released. But eight men convicted by a military tribunal last year of fomenting anti-Park demonstrations were executed, and the current repression continues unabated. Under his name last month, Park issued Presidential Emergency Decree No. 9, which makes any act of "denying, opposing, distorting and defaming" the constitution punishable by not less than one year in prison.

There are three principal targets of the decree: intellectuals; the reform-minded clergy, including many members of the country's Protestant-run, worker-oriented, urban industrial missions; and university students, who have played a traditionally tumultuous--and sometimes irresponsible--role in Korean politics. All three groups are kept under careful surveillance.

The most celebrated opponent of the Park government is the popular poet Kim Chi Ha, 34. Kim has persistently used poetic satire to ridicule the government, earning several terms in prison for his efforts. Sentenced to death last year, Kim was released in February. Last month he was jailed again on charges of having violated South Korea's sweeping anti-Communist law. The government, meanwhile, has begun international distribution of a pamphlet called The Case Against Kim Chi Ha, an effort to prove the highly dubious contention that Kim is a fervent Communist. Kim's friends fear that the government is moving to prepare public opinion for his execution.

Like almost everybody else in South Korea, the dissidents, whom Kim Chi Ha calls "the tear-gas generation," are strongly antiCommunist. In persecuting them, President Park insists that unless he halts "social ferment," the North might misread the situation and launch an attack. Indeed Park is faced with an excruciating dilemma: How to maintain a balance between democratic freedoms and the discipline necessary in a country genuinely threatened by invasion.

Still, his opponents argue that his repressive policies are aimed in large measure at keeping himself in power. Says Opposition Leader Kim Dae Jung: "Yes, the threat is there up north. But our President only keeps exaggerating it in order to prolong the life of his regime."

Sea Clashes. One person who no doubt takes great comfort from Park's problem with dissidents is Kim II Sung. Though Pyongyang's ultimate strategy is unclear, the North Koreans would certainly like to foment subversion within South Korea in the hope of weakening and ultimately eliminating Park.

In the view of many analysts, the North is most likely to test Seoul's resolve, and the strength of the American commitment, with a series of small-scale probes: infiltration through the eastern mountains, for example, or sea clashes over five islands off the northwestern coast that are under the U.N. command. The danger is that a failure by South Korean or U.S. forces to act forcefully in the face of such moves would be bad for Seoul's morale.

To guard against just that, Washington has repeatedly tried to reaffirm its commitment to South Korea. President Ford's trip to Seoul last November was a clear warning to the North not to test the American will. State Department, National Security Council and Pentagon officials have made trips to Seoul to assess the military situation.

In the event of a major assault across the DMZ, the Pentagon's contingency plans call for an air and artillery blitz directed against military installations in North Korea and against the mountain valleys just North of the DMZ through which North Korean troops and supplies would have to pass. Despite the fact that reliance on bombing and artillery has not proved very effective in past Asian wars, Pentagon analysts confidently predict that without the jungle cover or the sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia that the Vietnamese Communists enjoyed, the North Koreans would be quickly defeated. In fact, these analysts are convinced that a war would be wrapped up within the 60-day time limit allowed the President under the War Powers Act to commit American forces without congressional approval.

But even if the war was to go on longer, there is little doubt that it would receive strong congressional and public support. A Harris Poll released last week indicated that 43% of Americans would favor using American land, air and naval forces to defend South Korea if it should be attacked by the North; 37% were opposed; and 20% unsure. In a survey of congressional leaders, TIME found a consensus that the House and Senate would approve U.S. intervention. This is not only because of binding treaty obligations but also because a North Korean attack over the DMZ would quickly bring American forces under fire. "I'm not saying there wouldn't be opposition," notes House Republican Conference Chairman John Anderson of Illinois, "even strident opposition. But Congress would be supportive, even given the number of doves in the dovecote."

One solution to the Korean problem would be some sort of reconciliation between the two sides, an important element of which would be a diplomatic thaw between Washington and Pyongyang similar to the one between the U.S. and China. Beginning in 1972, there was a short-lived effort to establish communications between Seoul and Pyongyang. Emissaries from Park and Kim shuttled between the two capitals, and there were meetings at Panmunjom, the village in the DMZ familiar to Americans as the site of numerous acerbic exchanges between the North Koreans and the U.N. Armistice Commission.

Far Behind. One major problem, in the view of some U.S. analysts, was that the opening of the dialogue made the North realize how far behind the South it was in economic development. Pyongyang soon lost its enthusiasm for contacts. At the same time, South Koreans feared that the North was using the talks merely as one more means to extend Communism to the South.

As long as North-South detente remains at best a distant prospect, South Korea's main pillar of national strength will be the allegiance of its own people. Thus the question of Park's repressive government keeps coming up. Sometimes it is raised by Western critics who ignore the character of the Northern regime while finding fault with almost everything Park does. But even sympathetic observers worry that Park will lose the support he has gained through economic prosperity by cracking down too hard on freedom of expression. Repressive rule could thus pave the way for exactly the kind of subversion and revolt sought by Kim II Sung, especially if there should be a downturn in the economy.

In the event of war, full-scale or guerrilla, a dictatorial government could hurt South Korea in another essential area: it might antagonize Americans and weaken U.S. support. Park has far more to gain in the long run by preserving democratic freedom in Korea than by pursuing a tightlipped, shortrange, and possibly self-destructive quest for absolute security. Weighing the need for more freedom against the need for control in a dangerous situation remains one of the toughest tasks facing any political leader today.

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