UNCURK in Seoul

The whitewings of Seoul (old women with brushwood brooms) swept the capital's main streets early one morning last week. Later, the tong-yang (block leaders) hustled out 100,000 residents to shout mansei and wave proper flags in welcome for UNCURK, the United Nations Commission on Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea.

On unification the U.N., in fact, did not see eye to eye with Korea's President Syngman Rhee. And Koreans differed angrily among themselves. Despite a U.N. order that Korea above the 38th parallel did not come under the Rhee government, Seoul still claimed jurisdiction, demanded elections north of the parallel.

Korea's legislators showed their hostility to Rhee by demanding the resignation of the pro-Rhee cabinet on the ground that it was responsible for the war. Twice the Assembly refused to ratify Rhee's choice for Prime Minister, amiable George Paik, a Protestant mission college president who had been Education Minister before the war. The resentment against Paik and his sponsor stemmed partly from the fact that both had rated an airlift escape from Seoul last June, while many ordinary Assemblymen had to stay behind and hide.

Last week Rhee bowed to his domestic critics, appointed a cabinet in which all but one member belonged to the parliamentary opposition. For Prime Minister the legislators accepted John Myin Chang, Korea's Ambassador to the U.S. during the last two years, one of the few Roman Catholics in high Korean politics, and a member of the Conservative Democratic Party, the Assembly's strongest.