South Korea: Squeeze in Seoul

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In South Korea last week, a farmer named Song Kyu II traveled all the way from the southern provinces to parade before Seoul's Duk Soo Palace with a placard scrawled in his own blood: GENERAL PARK, PLEASE DO SOMETHING TO SETTLE THE CRISIS. Farmer Song was thrown in jail, along with some 200 other demonstrators who openly protested South Korean Strongman General Park Chung Hee's broken promise to call general elections in May and hand over power to the civilians. The wholesale arrests only served to attract more attentiom to the noisy campaign of former President Yun Po Sun, 65, and New Rule Party Leader Huh Chung, 67, who touched off the uproar with a series of antigovernment meetings.

Junta leaders were reluctant to arrest Yun and Huh for fear they would become political martyrs. But the men around Park did not hesitate to reject the opposition demands. Defense Minister Kim Sung Un summoned 160 top military men to Seoul for a strategy meeting, later took to a nationwide radio hookup to speak for them: "We strongly support the present government. There are seeds of uneasiness in the country, and this is not the time to transfer the government to civilians.'' Then, to make the point more emphatically, all 160 officers rode grandly through the streets of Seoul in a convoy of military Jeeps.

It was General Park himself who felt the squeeze, for he was less interested than the rest of his junta in retaining power in the hands of the army. But he could not bow to the clamoring civilians, or even to the pressure applied from Washington by U.S. Ambassador Samuel Berger last week. For if he reversed himself yet another time to support the civilians, a military coup might well topple him overnight.