The Press: That This Could Happen

The safest thing to be in today's rioting here was a foreign newsman, especially American. Anywhere a foreign newsman went, he was not only given freedom of action; he was assisted by the demonstrators and soldiers.

So, last week, reported United Press International in a dispatch datelined Seoul. But to one American newsman, Scripps-Howard Correspondent Jim G. Lucas, 45, the words must have had an odd ring. For the same demonstrators who were so kind to other foreign reporters had chased Lucas clean out of Korea.

A Pulitzer prizewinner in 1954 for international reporting, Lucas arrived in Korea in March, just four days before the national elections. He spent two days in bed with an upset stomach, on election day went to Panmunjom to watch a routine armistice meeting. But Lucas nonetheless filed on the election. He found it "less violent than in the past," dismissed charges of widespread election frauds as the transparent alibi of the defeated South Korean Democratic Party, which he claimed had been aided in its deceit by "segments of the American press" (other U.S. correspondents in Korea, persuaded that the elections had been rigged, promptly banded together in a "Segment Club"). According to Lucas, bloody post-election-day rioting in Masan" was no more than the work of Communist agitators.

In the days that followed, Lucas stuck to his guns, defending the person and regime of President Syngman Rhee. Soon he began getting threatening telephone calls in his Bando Hotel room in Seoul. Provided with an armed guard by Rhee, Lucas hastily packed his gear, flew off to safety in Tokyo. There, last week, he was still shaken by his experience. "Whoever leads the Republic of Korea in the months ahead will govern at the pleasure of the mob," wrote Lucas. "That this could happen in Korea — which I've come to regard as my second home — is unbelievable." But it was really no more unbelievable than Lucas' reporting of the Korean upheaval.