Little Tranquillity In Korea's 2000 Years

Press, Volume C, Issue 29536, 10 June 1961, Page 8

Little Tranquillity In Korea's 2000 Years

IBy R. E. BLAZEY, Tokyo Con esvn-n dent of "The Press"]

Although it is known to poets as the ‘'Land of the Morning Calm.” Korea as a nation has had little tranquillity in its 2000-year history. The recent coup of Lieutenant-General Chang Do Yung shatters precarious hopes for re-uniflcation and puts Korea back into a military strait-jacket of a war it cannot win. On the other hand it is highly probable that the military coup averted a leftist take-over and the eventual change to Communism of the south as well as t|ie north. Situated on . land bridge between the Anan mainland and the islands of Japan. Korea has fallen prey alternately to the Mongols, the Japanese and the Chinese Korea was the bridge which brought Confucian culture and literature to barbarian Japan in the sixth century The three Kingdoms of ancient Korea sent the first teachers to Japan in 595 and began receiving Japanese students in a historic version of the present day Colombo Plan. Aggression Later the Japanese repaid their benefactors with a series of aggressions against the mainland which culminated in the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1904. Apart from a brief period of peace and stability under the Three Kingdoms of the fifth century. Korea has ■been torn apart by civil wars, plundered by barbarian invaders and oppressed | beyond measure by imperialist Powers such as Japan and China. In spite of this the Koreans have clung determinedly to their own distinctive culture and customs. Seventy years of severe “colonisation" by the Japanese, during which the Korean people were forbidden to learn or use their own language failed to make the Koreans any less Korean while the United Nations’ troops in their brief march into the North in 1951 and 1952 found the Communists had had so little success that they had to use Chinese soldiers and Soviet technicians to fight the war. Korea’s hopes for liberty and peace in 1945 were dashed by the folly of the partition at the 38th.parallel The sources of industry and power were to be in the North. The South was condemned to the burden of a primitive agricultural economy and a surplus of people

Dr. Synguian Rhee

The self-proclaimed patriot. Dr. Syngman Rhee, in reality an opportunist with a career of anti-Japan-ism and a posture of antiCommunism. was the only Korean leader who would accept the partition. There were other patriots as well as Rhee but they insisted on immediate re-unification of their country before setting up a Government and before the Communists had time to consolidate the North, under their puppet regime. But that was not the easy way. Useless United Nations committees were set up to supervise free elections throughout Korea but with the Communists entrenched in the North and Rhee in the South they never had a chance.

I With bountiful American 'aid Rhee built up an army (of serfs, conscripted for as ■ long as they were wanted 'and paid in kind, a bag of ■ rice once a month and one day off to deliver it to their families Rhee’s army of 400,000. the fourth largest in the world, was a flop. It collapsed under the first Communist onslaught and had to be saved from complete destruction by United States and United Nations forces. Ln his 15 years of auto, cratlc rule Rhee did nothing for Korea, except carry the feud with Japan to childish and costly extremes, plunder the treasury and persecute the opposition to the best of his ability.

Hurried Departures

After his hurried departure for Hawaii last year the new Government charged him with having built up a personal fortune of more than 30 million dollars out of state funds. His ambassador In Japan absconded with 17 million dollar* and many

smaller fry escaped or were caught with more millions. The corruption revealed after Rhee’s flight staggered the imagination, and the new Government’s prosecutors who were never able to assess exactly how much had been stolen or misused altogether. In spite of the massive injections of American aid 289 million dollars in 1958, 273 million dollars in 1959. 232 million dollars in 1960, and approximately 266 million dollars projected for 1961, amounting to more than 1000 million dollars in the last four years alone, there were and are even now all too few signs of economic reconstruction, except for palatial quarters and amenities for Government officials and black market operators. Refugees The condition of the people became so bad that a return movement of refugees to North Korea through Japan began to gather momentum. No one wanted to face it and frantic efforts were made to deny it: but under the last days of the Rhee regime the South Koreans were beginning to think Communism could not be worse and many, given the chance to express themselves freely in Japan (to International Red Cross were representatives interviewing intending migrants to North Korea) said so. It was left to high school boys and girls, parading the streets of Seoul (without any known Communist instigation) and being shot down by Rhee's brutal National Security Police, to convince the Americans that their protege was a mere tyrant, and a scourge to his own people. John M. Chang, a Christian scholar, who as the leader of the opposition Democratic Party had to hide out in cellars for fear of his life at every election Rhee ever staged, took over the reins of Government and the hopeless task of trying to rebuild a nation ruined by war and corruption That he has failed is not surprising. America's change of heart toward Rhee was too late, the vultures too many and the remaining honest men too few. The military coup w»as inevitable as the only people profiting from the sorry plight of Korea were the Communists who were quick to exploit the new reform movement for their out purposes.