South Korea: Fatigues to Flannels

Seoul was decked in all its festive finery last week as South Korea observed the end of two years, seven months and one day of military dictatorship. Buses were garlanded with wreaths and newly made flags decorated storefronts and streetcars. The midnight curfew was lifted for the day, and 5,000 prison inmates were released on amnesty. In a bone-chilling drizzle before the national capitol building, 15,000 shivering spectators watched former military Strongman General Park Chung Hee, 46, take the oath of office as South Korea's fifth civilian President. Promising never "to permit the resurgence of dictatorship under any disguise or pretext," Park said: "The bright morning of the new republic has dawned. Let us put depression, melancholy, confusion and pessimism behind us and create a new history of optimism and determination."

Despite Park's ringing words, the only real change in South Korea's government is from military fatigues to civilian flannels. Under the new constitution, the President has almost dictatorial powers, and though Park's Democratic-Republican Party garnered only 34% of the vote in the National Assembly elections, the opposition was so split that the D.R.P. has a whopping, 45-seat parliamentary plurality. Though Park pleaded for national unity, Opposition Leader Yun Po Sun, who barely lost the presidential election, boycotted the Assembly's opening session, and other dissident Assemblymen threatened to investigate the corruption prevalent under Park's military junta.

Far more menacing to Park is South Korea's chaotic economy. In the past year, retail prices have climbed 40%, and some 10% of the labor force is unemployed. Foreign exchange reserves have plummeted to $105 million. Desperate for a new dollop of U.S. economic aid, Park invited a U.S. congressional delegation to his inauguration. But the U.S. has slashed next year's total aid commitment by $54 million to $236 million, hopes to pressure Park into stabilizing the economy.

A continuing dictatorship in South Korea is not very palatable to the U.S. But with his dictatorial powers, Park can at least promise a degree of political stability.