SOUTH KOREA: Old Men Forget

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From the sanctuary of one of Seoul's private hospitals, Lee fought a stubborn delaying action. Rushing off to Kyung-mudae, Madame Lee joined forces with her great friend, Rhee's Austrian wife Francesca, and together the two women spent a tearful hour begging Rhee not to insist on Lee's resignation. But the pressure on Rhee steadily increased. Ambassador McConaughy came through the tanks, machine guns and barbed wire around the palace to deliver another reminder of U.S. concern. At Inchon, 25,000 people turned out to demonstrate—with no violence from the chastened police—for new elections. Late in the week, despite the fact that his term still had four months to run. Lame Duck John Chang resigned as Vice President with the avowed intention of encouraging both Rhee and Lee Ki Poong to follow his example.

Hospital Call. Momentarily shaken out of his conviction that his troubles were all the work of "Communist agents," Rhee began to talk vaguely of re-establishing the office of Premier (which he abolished in 1954) and of reducing his own functions as President to those of a symbolic chief of state. But when his long-awaited announcement of plans finally came, it contained only token concessions. Said Rhee: "I have come to think that as President it will be better for me to divorce myself from the [Liberal] Party and seek to serve the nation solely as its chief executive and the head of its administration."

Lee Ki Poong. who had nervously announced that he was "considering" resigning, now declared that, though he planned to retire eventually, "many" of his colleagues had begged him to stay on for a while. Lee's strong card seemed to be that if he resigned, as well as Chang, the government would be legally obliged to hold new vice-presidential elections—a loss of face Rhee was not yet ready to accept.

Syngman Rhee had clung to power too stubbornly and manipulated Korea's constitution to his own advantage too often for anyone to be very impressed by his mere promise "to correct the mistakes of the past." At week's end Rhee made his first trip out of the palace since the riots, to pay a tearful hospital call on some of the wounded students. The crowds that had always applauded him in the past now stared in stolid silence.