After the Shadow

SOUTH KOREA

Marking the third anniversary of his military takeover in South Korea, General Chung Hee Park confessed last month that he was sorry about how things had worked out thus far. He admitted that the coup's objectives--prosperity, solving the food shortage, arresting inflation, halting corruption--had not yet been achieved, added mournfully, "I sorely regret this." Last week, after two months of .growing unrest, Park was joined in his regret by thousands of rioting students.

Park's list of failures was accurate enough. Corruption and speculation are rampant, the price of rice has skyrocketed 150% in the past 15 months, and mounting unemployment now stands at 2,500,000--more than 10% of the population. Sporadic student demonstrations began in March, ostensibly protesting Park's conditions for "normalizing" relations with Japan,* then turned on the government in general.

In a scene reminiscent of the last days of Syngman Rhee, some 12,000 placard-carrying students, cheered on by thousands of adults, marched in drizzling rain down Seoul's Capitol Avenue one day last week, crying "Drive Park out!" and "People are hungry! Let us eat profiteering millionaires!" Outnumbered police opened up with tear gas; the rioters replied with rock barrages, broke through police lines and drove off nine army trucks being used as barricades. The screaming, cursing clashes lasted all day and into the night, left scores of injured littering the wet pavement. Clamping on martial law in the capital, President Park ordered in thousands of army troops. The following day new riots erupted in twelve other cities; in Pusan, students fought the police for hours; in Kwangju, 165 miles south of the capital, 6,000 students sacked the provincial headquarters.

Hoping to disperse the rioters, Park ordered all colleges and universities closed until July 4, which is one day before the regular summer holiday begins. Then, as an appeasing gesture, Park reluctantly fired his top collaborator: Kim Chong Pil, Park's nephew by marriage and head of Park's Democratic-Republican Party. Kim is hated by the students because of the ruthless way he once ran Park's Central Intelligence Agency and because he has been instrumental in the controversial negotiations with Japan. Kim is fond of saying, "I am nothing but a shadow of the President." Would the man who casts the shadow be the mob's next victim?

* South Korea has long demanded heavy indemnification for its 35 years of occupation by Japan from 1910 to 1945; now the government is considering a Japanese offer of a $600 million reparation package, previously dismissed in Seoul as inadequate, and a compromise on fishing rights.

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