RUSSIAN ZONE OF KOREA

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25089, 22 January 1947, Page 5

RUSSIAN ZONE OF KOREA

AMERICAN PARTY’S VISIT

CLOSE SUPERVISION

WASHINGTON, December 14. A bizarre story of a heavily-guarded tour m Russian-controlled Korea which produced threats that picturetakers should be shot but which wound up in an exchange of daggers with a Soviet general and a farewell vodka dinner vas unfolded to-day in the diary of the Reparations Commissioner. Mr Edwin W. Pauley Mr Pauley’s dairy of a six-day inspection trip through the Northern (Soviet) zone went to President Truman with a report in which Mr Paulev said that it might be Russia’s aim to force a Moscow-dominated Government on all Korea before she agreed to withdraw her troops. The inspection group of 19 Americans was accompanied into Northern Korea by a contingent of Russian soldiers armed with American "tommy” guns dwarfing in size the White House secret service detail. The Russians made direct and determined efforts to prevent the Americans from talking to Koreans. Mr Pauley related, going to the length of snouting down” American interpreters. Threat on Pictures At P n ? Point a Russian general told rum that if the Americans did not stop taking pictures “some of us might not even have the opportunity of being sorry we took them.” Mr Pauley, who wears the title of the President’s Personal Ambassador, related that he and Colonel-General I. M. Chistiakov, the Soviet supreme commander in Korea, could not agree at their first conference on the areas that the American mission was to visit. So the United States reparations commissioner tried a little strategy. He sent the Soviet general a riding crop find found the Russian much more affable at their next meeting. “It was a special one and a very fine one with a thin dagger sword blade inside of it,” Mr Pauley wrote in his diary. “It evidently made a great hit and may have caused the change in his attitude.”

Later General Chistiakov, not to be outdone, gave Mr Pauley “a beautifully finished dagger knife.” This presentation, Mr Pauley said, was followed by a “typical Russian dinner” at which vodka flowed freely and there was “ten times too much to eat.” Previously the party had been guests at a dinner given by General Romanenko, who conducted the Americans on their restricted tour. •

“Soviet Guards Everywhere” The Russians took no chances guarding the members of his mission, Mr Pauley related.

“There are Soviet guards everywhere, with their ever-present ‘tommy’ guns,” he wrote. “The President of the United States, if he had his entire Secret Service guard assembled at one time, was never guarded as completely as we are.”

The Soviet officials warned the Americans against taking pictures, Mr Pauley said, but he replied that the United States cameramen were not “shooting” any military objectives, and besides, the war was over. “General Romanenko said that these were his orders.” Mr Pauley noted, ‘‘and if we disobeyed them it would be he that would get in trouble because some of the guards might be too quick to enforce the orders not to a’low pictures to be taken. He added that some of us might not even have the opportunity of being sorry we took them.”

On a definite mission to inspect industrial plants. Mr Pauley noted: “It is probably only a coincidence that the only time the train speeds up is when we- are passing an industrial plant.” When the Russians said that a certain machine tool factory did not ex-

ist, Mr Pauley sent. Mr Chang, his K ?L e u a . n interpreter, to try to find it. This was quite an undertaking,” Mr Pauley said, “because the Soviet officers had surrounded Mr Chang with Soviet-Korean interpreters. The poor fellow could not make a move without being followed or walked in front of, or shouted down when he asked a question. It was very apparent they did not want us to receive any information from the Korean populace whatever.” z They finally found the machine shop, Mr Pauley related, only to discover that it was next door to an electrical power substation from which all the transformers had been removed. “This was apparently the reason why we had difficulty finding our machine shop in the first place,” he added. Contrast to Manchuria In contrast to Manchuria, where he said the Russians had carted away enough machinery to wreck the industrial plant, Mr Pauley found industry in operation in the Soviet zone of Korea. But he reported that the Soviet Union appeared to have embarked on a programme of Communist propaganda and of obtaining control of all governmental and economic functions. Though Russian banners extolling the Soviet Government as “the highest form of democracy” adorned the streets. Mr Pauley reported that there were some indications that the Koreans were not co-operating fully with Soviet occupation forces. . “There have been so many mcidents’ between the Soviet forces and the Koreans after dark,” he wrote in his diary, “that General Chistiakov was forced to issue an order that after dark a Russian must be accompanied by two others. Still, two or three are killed every night by Koreans who have no weapons other than a rock.”