KOREA: Gracious Gesture

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Like a cat smiling at a canary, Russia usually plans her shrewdest moves behind an expression of blandest virtue. A year ago she graciously offered to withdraw her occupation forces from North Korea provided the U.S. did the same in the south. In many parts of the East and elsewhere, the gesture went down as a magnanimous one. It put the U.S. on the spot. Washington could not match the Russian gesture because it knew that the Russians had fostered a puppet government in their section of Korea and backed it with a Soviet-trained and armed Korean army 100,000 strong. If the U.S. Army pulled out of South Korea, the Soviet puppets in the north could easily swallow the whole country.

Last week, after almost doubling its North Korean native army, the Russians made their offer again, this time even more magnanimously. From Moscow, just in time to impress the U.N. General Assembly in Paris, came the announcement that all Soviet troops would be withdrawn from Korea by Jan. 1, whether the U.S. followed suit or not. The action, said the Russians, was taken at the request of the "Supreme National Assembly of Korea" (the puppet government), which hoped that now "the U.S. would agree to withdrawal of its troops."

The U.S., however, was still unprepared for a troop withdrawal; the U.S.-sponsored South Korean Republic had a native defense force of only 60,000 men.