SOUTH KOREA: Mourning and Post-Mortems

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A royal burial for Park and new evidence of a misfired coup

Within sight of two tanks hidden discreetly behind the trees, thousands of mourners flocked in front of the capitol in Seoul last week, in a mass wake for South Korea's slain President Park Chung Hee. Day after day, uniformed schoolchildren, silk-clad housewives and bearded village elders disembarked from rickety country buses and surged through a choking cloud of incense past the dozen black-draped altars. There, Buddhist priests murmured their sutras while mourners prostrated themselves in grief. With a shrug, a government worker whispered the prevailing mood of sorrowful but stoical resignation: "Gone is gone."

On the surface, at least, there was a semblance of stability and normality in Seoul. The 10 p.m. curfew ordered under martial law closed down the city's busy neon nightlife. Still wary that North Korea might use Park's death as a pretext for invasion, South Korea's own 600,000-man armed force, as well as the 39,000 U.S. troops stationed in the country, remained on alert. Stepped-up intelligence surveillance, however, detected no threatening military movements across the Demilitarized Zone. Most of all, South Korea's interim emergency government seemed to be functioning smoothly. For the moment, at least, the constitutional power structure remained in place. The Cabinet was intact, and it met daily under Acting President Choi Kyu Hah, who had been Park's Premier.

Beneath the surface calm, however, was a growing mood of uncertainty. Koreans speculated endlessly about what, and who, would replace Park. With the major political figures out of public view, in deference to the nine-day mourning period, nobody could measure the extent of the power struggle that might already be under way behind the scenes. Nor could anyone tell for sure who was actually in charge of the country. Much of the talk centered on the enigmatic figure of General Chung Seung Hwa, 53, the Army Chief of Staff and Martial Law Commander. Last week Chung's deputy, Lieut. General Lee Hee Sung, was named as acting chief of the discredited but still powerful Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Chung immediately ordered a purge of the agency's upper echelons. Most observers concluded that he had already emerged as the dominant figure of the interim regime. Also, few doubted that he would be a power to reckon with in the succession struggle.

At present, the most intense speculation focused on the unanswered questions about the assassination itself, now commonly known as the Friday Night Massacre. Nobody disputed the bare facts of the case: Park, along with his chief security officer, Cha Chi Chul, and four bodyguards had been killed by KCIA Director Kim Jae Kyu and five of his men during dinner in a private room of a KCIA building. The alleged assassin and the dinner's sole survivor, Park's presidential chief of staff, Kim Kae Won, were both under arrest, and 30 to 50 KCIA officers had also been taken in for questioning. Each successive government explanation, however, left a trailing edge of mystery about who, exactly, had been involved and how far conspiracy had extended.