International: The Man of Different Wisdom

In the wild Chiri ("Different Wisdom") mountains of southwest Korea, Red guerrilla bands still maraud and plunder, sweeping down from their lairs to ransack villages and loot the creaky buses that bounce along the region's rutted roads. There are at least 3,000 guerrillas, and the villagers on whom they prey call them San Sonnim ("Mountain Guests"). Until last week many of them were devoted henchmen of Lee-Hyun Sang, a plump, mustached Marxist.

Lee joined the guerrillas in 1949, a year after most of them had deserted Syngman Rhee's army. He plodded up the mountains, muttered the proper passwords and quietly announced that...