O My Korea!

IT WAS strange to go back to Korea. Preparing for the journey to the country I was born in and had not seen for ten years, I had thought that it was going to be a simple and happy occasion that was long overdue. I was returning to the land which had taken me, a refugee from the Communist-dominated North, into its bosom, and the land, for which I had fought in the bloody war, where I would be reunited with my parents and kin. Cheerfully I was willing to ignore the inexorable flow of time and to laugh at the Korean saying that in ten years even the courses of rivers and the shapes of mountains change. My parents and my friends in Korea had warned me that I would not be able to recognize the country and must be prepared for an emotional shock at seeing how different and changed everything was. They were quite wrong, for I found everything essentially unchanged. Koreans would say to me, “Gomonyang Gokol” (“not a bit of change or difference”) — and “Gomonyang Gakol” in Korea can be a source of exasperating experience, so that, in the end, my nostalgia turned into frustration.

When I arrived in early June, Korea was suffering from what everyone said was the worst drought in decades. Under the sizzling sun, rice paddies were turning into parched, brittle wasteland; and glaring at the delightfully clear blue sky where placid white clouds floated by, people mourned the absence of rain, for which heaven was to be blamed. Rice paddies needed water desperately, and the precious water was not falling down from heaven. Too little rain, and the rice crop would be ruined; too much rain, and it would be ruined too; and heaven was capricious just as it has always been.

The President and his ministers toured the country exhorting the people not to worry too much about the drought, and the government rushed a number of water pumps from Japan, but not enough of them and a little too late. The U.S. troops helped the government’s effort — and so did Korean actors and actresses, who strolled the streets of Seoul, in comic costumes and with money boxes, soliciting contributions from the people “To Buy Water Pumps.” I put money into their boxes gladly, but I wondered why the government had not done something about the water supply for the most important crop of the land before all these frantic measures became necessary. I was suddenly reminded of the last days of the Japanese Empire, when the Japanese teachers in our grade school made us drop a coin or two (on some trumped-up charges of misconduct) into tin cans that were in every classroom to contribute toward buying kamikaze planes to sink American ships in the Pacific.

Listening to the singsong voices of those pretty Korean actresses teasing the passersby, I could not help feeling that the whole affair was comic, even absurd. What could one do about the drought? Well, one could talk about it — and wait — but wait for what? For heaven to change its mind? The unreliable heaven was the chief villain in this melodrama, and no one else, nothing else, was responsible for the misfortune. Here was a perfect scapegoat — and there are too many scapegoats in Korea today.

IN THE suffocating heat and dust of the droughtstricken summer, the scenes in Seoul were slightly maddening. To begin with, the whole country was going through an extensive and hysterical antiCommunist campaign. Slogans, posters, handbills saturated all of Seoul with their exhortation to the citizens to watch out for Red Spies. Of course, antiCommunism is not new in Korea. The country has always been fiercely anti-Communist, and this has become a supreme national policy, so much so that it has been solemnly elevated into a rather dubious kind of raison d’être of the nation itself. As the national goal, this often melodramatic policy of anti-Communism is unnerving because it is essentially a negative approach. It places emphasis on being against something and someone outside the country rather than on being for something and someone within the country. The war has been over for more than a decade, and a new generation has grown up that has not experienced the bitter reality of the struggle against the northern Communists. But the country has been on a constant wartime basis, and its irrevocable antiCommunist position, with a witch-hunt campaign and always the specter of renewed fighting, seems to have created a state of tension, which has been manipulated by Korean regimes in their effort to sustain a semblance of national unity and to consolidate their political power.

The threat from the North is real enough. Although any violent shift in the uneasy status quo between South Korea and North Korea will be the result of an international power play, no one can forget that Seoul lies a horrifyingly short distance from the menacing Communist guns and fortifications along the line of the demilitarized zone, and the nightmarish memories of the stunning initial defeat and chaos South Koreans experienced in the war are still vivid. But to base the existence of an entire nation on being against something causes a regime to forget or, even worse, ignore what it is basically for. Coupled with the grim wartime experience, this fundamentally negative attitude in defining and pursuing the national destiny produces a narrow-minded, nearsighted vision of life at best, and at worst, breeds a sickly atmosphere of subtle inferiority, suspicion, and mistrust, and a disturbing sense of uncertainty.

That is, I am afraid, what is happening in Korea today; and without this realization, there are simply too many things in Korean life too baffling to understand. How else could I understand the peculiar conversation I had with two friends of mine in a tearoom? One was a young composer, and the other a “starving painter,” as he put it. It all started with the music of Prokofiev, of all things. We had just ordered coffee, and a petite hostess, having waited for the waitress to withdraw, came to our table. “And now, gentlemen,” she said, “what music would you care to listen to? You write down what you would like to hear, and I’ll play it for you when your turn comes up.”

My composer friend turned to me, and said, “You’d better not ask for Prokofiev.” My painter friend added, “Nor Shostakovich.”

“Why not?” I asked, a little confused.

“Be careful of what you say,” the hostess whispered to the composer.

He said, “It’s all right. I don’t see any spies around. Besides, they wouldn’t understand.”

The painter said, “Better speak in English.”

The hostess laughed softly, and turned to me. “Tchaikovsky is all right,” she said. “I’ll play him for you.”

When she left us, the young composer said, “Last year, there was a rather comical furor when the national anthem of the Soviet Union was found to be included on some records of national anthems of all countries brought in from Japan. The Intelligence Bureau entered the case, and many people were questioned as if some crime had been committed.”

The painter said to me, “Mind you, you are in a free country.” They were speaking in English. The composer continued: “There are many other examples of the belief, which, incidentally, originated in the Soviet Union itself, that music can have an intrinsically political significance. As you must know, all music by recent or living composers of Iron Curtain countries is banned in Korea. A scheduled performance of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto had to be canceled after it had been announced for the last International Music Festival here in Seoul. And that’s not all. Do you remember Han Tong-il?”

I nodded; Han Tong-il is a young Korean pianist of great talent now living in America. “Yes, I remember him; I heard him play in a program conducted by Leonard Bernstein in New York.”

The composer said, “Han Tong-il was in Korea, and he gave a sort of homecoming recital, you know, but the recital was delayed when police demanded that a group of Prokofiev piano pieces be stricken from the program.” “That’s not all, either,” said the painter. “But here is an ironic thing,” said the composer. “If Shostakovich and Prokofiev are to be banned here, then Zoltán Kodály ought to be banned, too, wouldn’t you say? But the police or the Korean CIA, whoever is in charge of supervising music, apparently doesn’t know about Kodály. The Peabody College Chorus sang a Kodály folksong arrangement, and the London Symphony Orchestra performed his Galanta Dances, Horrors!”

The painter said, “Ah, but there’s the twist. The Peabody College Chorus was sponsored by the U.S. State Department, and anything from America is all right. The London Symphony Orchestra? Well, England is a free country, isn’t it? Anything from England is all right, too.” Chopin’s Polonaise ended, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Pathétique, came on. The painter said, “Yeah, Tchaikovsky is all right. I tell you this is a crazy country.”

Sipping the cold, stale coffee, I thought that all this was not new in Korea, and that it has been in the making for a long time.

The perverse atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust was, indeed, a major disease of Syngman Rhee’s regime. The present regime has inherited the disease and so far has not done much to prevent its cancerous growth. Each of the major regimes in recent Korean history has helped create and often encourage the sort of political and social atmosphere which now seems to have become a permanent part of the Korean mentality. The royal regimes of the Li dynasty are best known and remembered for their five hundred years of factional strife, intrigues, regicides, and political murders. The Japanese colonial rule with its brutal, iron-fisted policies for nearly forty years helped Koreans turn suspicion and mistrust of Japanese and fellow Koreans into a nationalistic virtue and patriotic duty. Syngman Rhee’s autocracy helped produce many a petty, impotent Korean who, in turn, helped revive the shameful political heritage of the Li dynasty; and now, the present regime, born of a military coup d’etat and having inherited all the political and social evils of the past, continues to haunt the people and be haunted by the people, all breathing in a foul air of irresponsibility, destructive mutual suspicion, and ultimately, a mutual hatred.

DURING my stay in Korea, I talked with many politicians of both the government party and the opposition party; and the only thing they convinced me of was that not many of them even bothered to try to understand each other’s position. A politician of the government party, a former military commander of a combat team, said to me, “Now, you take the case of the so-called return to normalcy. I am all for the principle of civilian control. Who isn’t? We are a democratic people, and we must have democracy in this country. Everybody knows that! So, when the military government finished its job, we thought it was time for a national election, time to get back to a normal situation. We took off our uniforms and ran for office as civilians. Well, we won the election, didn’t we? Now the opposition politicians accuse us of not keeping our promise to get out of politics and go back to our barracks. I tell you, we couldn’t do that, because these politicians are all rotten and power-hungry. Why, if we really had gone back to our barracks and handed everything over to those old-time politicians we would have had to launch another coup all over again. The country wouldn’t have lasted a week.”

I ventured to say, “You could have at least tried to see how things would work out. You had cleaned house, and you could afford to go back to the barracks and see how the civilians would carry on the job you had started. If they had messed things up again, as you say, then the country would have clamored for you to come back and clean house again.”

“Ah, but that’s not good. You can’t take a chance with those rotten politicians. That wouldn’t have worked. Why, that wouldn’t have done any good for our democracy.” Here we go again, I thought; democracy, democracy! The Korean politicians are always talking about democracy.

A few days before, a politician from one of the southern provinces had told me that the way things were going in the country, it would never have democracy. “The soldiers should have kept their promise and gone back to their barracks and stayed there. What do they know about politics and administration anyway!” I reminded him that those who had staged the coup seemed to have thought that the civilian politicians had only managed to plunge the country into chaos and that the country as a whole seemed to have shared the same thought, at least in the beginning. He snorted. “Why, Jookill Nomdul! They are just stupid military bosses! What pretension! It’s outrageous! They should have stayed put with what they are trained for — to fight the Communists.”

“Manghal Nomdul” (“bastards who deserve to perish”), “Jookill Nomdul” (“bastards who deserve to be killed”) — these words are flying about in the inflammatory atmosphere of Korean political life. Today in Korea there are simply too many Manghal Nomdul and Jookill Nomdul — and there are too few who will forgive.

At the root of all this is the ancient tradition that any government in Seoul is a crooked government, an evil one at worst, and at best, one that is totally indifferent to the welfare of the people. This once historically explainable and justifiable Korean political mentality is still casting a powerful spell over Koreans’ political and social consciousness. The people have never felt that they had anything to do really with the business of running a government or with the fortunes of the nation; the government was the plaything of those who were in power.

“Since the overthrow of Syngman Rhee’s regime,” a professor of government remarked to me in Seoul, “the country has seen too many professional politicians, old and new, on the political stage, each blindly performing his role of tearing down the other politician-actors, without a central direction, without a sensible, coherent plot, and without an ending, happy or unhappy, in anyone’s sight.”

What Korea needs, for the sake of achieving some kind of political stability and getting something done for the people, is a responsible opposition, which knows when to oppose the government constructively. No government on earth can be completely right; no government can escape charges of corruption and inefficiency; and the present Korean government is no exception. Yet it can’t be as bad as the opposition would like to have the people believe. The opposition seems to oppose merely for the sake of opposing and regardless of the cost. It stoops to primitive brawling in the halls of the National Assembly, smashing the tables and chairs of the members of the government party, and it continually issues grandiloquent statements in inflammatory language.

I have met very few politicians of the opposition party who could rationally and logically explain to me why they were opposing, for example, the treaty with Japan. “Those who have negotiated the treaty with the Japanese have been bribed by the Japanese officials,” one insisted. Another politician said categorically, “You can’t expect an honest policy from a corrupt government.”

“Korea hasn’t got a chance to protect itself against the economic invasion of Japan once this treaty goes into effect,” said another. “Surely we haven’t forgotten how cunning and cruel the Japanese were in their dealings with us. Or has President Park never known that, since he was an officer in the Japanese Army?”

The opposition party, badly split and eternally squabbling among its factions, considers the government a bunch of evil, ignorant military men and subservient, opportunistic politicians who are bent on setting up a corrupt dictatorship, engage in personal profiteering, and, of course, “are selling out the country to the Japanese.” Opposition politicians stubbornly refer to the present government as a military government in spite of the last, relatively free national election, which the opposition lost mainly because of its inability to unite.

It is a frantic, feverish world, whether one is a professional politician or merely an isolated, single individual intent on making the most out of his miserable lot. They all move in a world of suspicion, mistrust, and disbelief, and utter selfishness. One of the most popular sayings, pronounced with a ponderous air of profundity, these days is, “You can’t trust anybody.” Well, that is not new in Korea either, but Koreans today have forged that dictum into a philosophy of life, and until and unless that dubious philosophy is discarded in favor of something a little more decent and humane, there will be no political stability and no sense of responsive and responsible relationship between the governing and the governed, and above all, there will never be a coherent sense of nationhood in Korea.

KOREAN politicians seem to be convinced that democracy is a big joke but nice to have around as a respectable front, that it does not pay politically to try to be faithful to the principles and practices of democracy in opposing the party in power or in checking the party out of power, and that when in office a politician must hang on to power by any means, democratic or undemocratic. In short, Korean politics is thoroughly Machiavellian. No wonder, then, that a tradition of responsible opposition has not yet emerged in Korea.

Yet a responsible opposition cannot be manufactured overnight; it must be nurtured and cultivated; and it needs help from the party in power in the form of a responsive government. But a responsive government is something that Koreans do not understand either in concept or in practice, simply because they have never had one.

The Rhee regime of the First Republic certainly was not a responsive government. The Chang regime of the brief Second Republic was so ineffectual that it could not even be called a government. The military government of the interim period, born of the military coup d’etat of 1961, could hardly be expected to be either responsive or responsible. And whether or not the present regime will eventually emerge as a genuinely responsive government remains to be seen, although there are signs that it, too, like the Rhee regime, will withdraw into a shell of illusions and delusions that all is well outside, that its power is mighty and secure, and that it can go on forever.

When I interviewed President Park, he brought up, without my prompting, the subject of the student demonstrations. He did not seem worried about the students, or about anything else. In fact, the strongest impression I had of him was that he was a man of supreme self-confidence and that nothing could shake him. He had toughness and, I must say, a certain aura of mystery. He looked perfectly fit, physically and emotionally, and everything about him suggested that he was quite serene in his conviction that what he was doing as head of the state was right. “The students do not really know what they want,” the President said. “They are instigated and excited by the opposition party politicians, who are manipulating the youngsters for their own political purposes. Of course, we know that the so-called leaders of the student demonstrations either are not really students themselves or are so-called professional students. The students will calm down soon.”

He changed the subject here and talked about his visit to West Germany. “I was enormously impressed with the Germans. Their recovery from the war. Their industriousness. A hardworking people with so many virtues; one could learn from them,” he said. “I often wonder, you know, if the history and the fortunes of our country would have been different had we had neighbors like Germany instead of China and Japan.”

I tried to bring him out of his historical speculations. “Your Excellency,” I said, “it is said that in a democracy it is more important for a nation’s political health to have a responsible opposition, and I wonder if — ”

He interrupted me, and said, “Of course. And I have been trying very hard to have a dialogue of a sort with the opposition politicians, but they are always fighting among themselves. They don’t even have a leader. With whom should I, could I, discuss matters of national importance? I can’t talk with every one of them.” His confidence and serenity were rather infectious as he continued to discourse on the “bright future" of the country.

GRANTED that the true motivation of the opposition politicians is to grab the political power themselves; granted also that the students do not really know what they are doing; yet the government cannot afford to dismiss either lightly. Ramming its legislation through the government-dominated National Assembly or ratifying the controversial Korea-Japan Treaty in the total absence of the opposition members — such actions do not improve the already bloodthirsty relationship between the two parties. Closing down colleges and universities, firing antigovernmental professors, and dismissing student leaders to prevent demonstrations by hysterical mobs will not eliminate the dangerous tension that exists between the students and the government.

In its confrontation with various elements of political opposition the government has been too uncompromising and heavy-handed. Coupled with this hard-line policy, there has been an increasing reliance on the steadily expanding powers and functions of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

“Our intelligence bureau is the true government of Korea,” remarked a Korean cynic, and he may not be too far from the truth. The CIA may not be the true government in Korea, but it is certainly beginning to give the impression that it is almost a government within the government. Its influence is far-reaching and deadly, and it is dreaded and despised by the people. First created by the military government of the coup d’etat of 1961, the Korean CIA is a unique institution in that apart from its alleged primary function of coordinating all Korean intelligence activities, it has dabbled in stock market manipulation, scandalous undercover deals with automobile manufacturers, and the construction of the multimillion-dollar tourist resort complex known as Walker Hill (named after a U.S. general killed in the war). University students accuse it of spying on every campus, and a rumor has it that it has established a secret underground progovernment student organization.

In the old days, it was the National Police people were afraid of; then, during the war, it was the CIC; later, it was the notorious Headquarters of the Unified Provost Marshal; and now, it is the ubiquitous CIA. An unfortunate fact is that there are far too many security and intelligence organizations and units the people seem to be afraid of; and that is not helping their morale, or promoting their confidence in the government. Besides, the existence of the CIA as it is now, with its peculiar conception and with its awesome power and inevitable abuse of its power, provides a ready-made target for the opposition party in its accusation that the government is running a police state.

One afternoon, a reporter friend of mine and I walked into the coffee shop of Chosun Hotel in downtown Seoul. My friend paused a moment at the entrance and casually remarked to me, “Aha, I see two CIA agents already. A little early today, I must say.”

When we sat down at a table, I said jokingly, “How can you identify them just like that? Do you know them personally?”

“Everybody knows their agents. If you hang around here long enough, you’ll get to know them, too. In every store, every restaurant, every tearoom — particularly tearooms — there they are. So behave yourself. Little brothers are watching.”

“Would you say they are running a police state?” I said.

He gestured theatrically. “Oh, no, quite the contrary. My dear friend from. America, they are running a free, democratic country!” Of course, our conversation was carried out in English; my friend had been an army captain attached to American units during the war.

“Pretty soon, the CIA will have to send their agents to an English-language school, ha, ha,” said my friend.

“Perhaps they already have,” I said.

Frightened, intimidated people do not make loyal, responsible citizens; they are merely resentful, coerced subjects. And Koreans have been coerced subjects of this country and that, of this regime and that, for far too long. A sense of insecurity and terror is inspired by the menacing presence of the CIA and the proliferation of intelligence agents; out of an insecure and cowed people comes an equally insecure but brutal government.

President Park said to me that he was getting impatient with the opposition. “Now they are screaming,” he said, “that if we ratify the treaty with Japan and normalize our relationships with Japan, Korea will be swallowed up overnight by Japanese economic imperialism. They are afraid that Korea will end by becoming a market for Japanese consumer goods and that we will never regain economic independence. Why have they so little confidence in themselves and in the ability of our people? We’re not talking about the Korea of fifty years ago. We’ve come through a bloody war; we’re tough, capable, and confident! What nonsense to say that the government is just going to sit around and let Japanese merchants take over the country. These politicians are simply trying to capitalize on whatever uneasy feelings our people may still have about Japan. I wish they had a little more confidence in themselves and in the government.” But the President and the government, however confident they may be of their own ability, seem to have failed somehow to carry the people along with them. There is a saying heard too often in Korea these days: “The way things are going, the country may go down the drain.” (“Eeru da gan, nara mang han da.”)

OUTSIDE Seoul to the east, a dusty, gutted road winds past primitive mud huts which stink with poverty-stricken humanity in the broiling midsummer sun. The road turns into a paved and landscaped driveway, which snakes its way amid bewitching scenery up to the Walker Hill resort complex, overlooking a beautiful view of the upper Han River valley. The buildings are modern and equipped with American-style facilities. Originally built by the military government, accompanied by the shrill hue and cry of scandals and corruption, to lure American GIs and foreign tourists away from Japan, the resort was not open to Koreans, but now, for financial reasons primarily, Koreans are admitted. And in this never-never land of luxury and pleasure, uneasily mixing with foreigners, wellheeled Koreans sip expensive drinks, watch insipid nightclub shows, and feel important.

Back in the city along the riverbank south of the Han River bridge, miserable cardboard huts mushroom overnight, teeming with slum dwellers. And they are all gazing at the sun-scorched, stinking, drought-stricken riverbed, waiting for the Flood.

“Where are they from?” I asked my friend from my army days who accompanied me there.

“Ask them,” he said.

I looked about us, at their sullen faces, and at their ragged clothes — old and young, women and children. The air smelled of the refuse piled in the dark, slimy water of a narrow, open drain near a hut. Half-naked children, and flies, swarmed about in the dry, dusty, foul air. I spoke to a middle-aged woman who was nursing a baby in the shadow of her hut, squatting against its cardboard wall.

“I don’t know anything,” she said, without raising her dirty face from the baby. “You got to ask the man of the house, and he is out. I don’t know anything.”

My friend said, “Listen, we are not from the police.”

“Why did you say that?” I asked.

“These people are perpetual slum dwellers. Once in a while, the government tries to clean out the slums, but that simply means the government will tear down and burn up their shacks. And the people? Sometimes they are sent to relocation centers, which are too few, and sometimes they are just driven out of Seoul. The people disappear for a while, and when the government gets tired of chasing them around, they slip back into Seoul. These people are here for one good reason. They know it’s going to rain someday. The drought will come to an end. And the rain will flood the river, the river will swell up and spill over that bank there, and then they will be washed out.”

Suddenly, the woman looked up. “You — from the newspapers?” she said. She was looking at the camera in my hand.

I shook my head.

“He is a writer,” my friend told her. “He writes books. You know what that means?”

She shrugged with a sheepish smile; a couple of her front teeth were missing. “I can’t read,” she said, quite unselfconsciously.

“When and if they get flooded out,” said my friend, “the government will have to rescue them, so to speak. They will get free medical checkups, a few shots in their arms, some clothing and blankets, maybe some rations, and then they will disappear before the government can get around to chasing them out of the city. So right now they are here for these free handouts.”

“Where will they go after that?” I asked.

“They probably don’t know themselves where they will go after that,” my friend said, and then burst out in English, “Goddamn! Now you’ve seen the country!” It was he who had taken me to Walker Hill the day before.

Seoul now has a population of nearly three and a half million people, and one shudders at the thought that the millions of have-nots in the teeming back alleys and gutters may someday explode. Of course, Seoul is not the only place where the nation’s displaced, uprooted, and unemployed converge. Other cities, too, are swollen with masses of unfortunate humanity. These masses of have-nots are the most serious challenge to the existence of the government and ultimately to the stability and future of the entire nation. The gulf between the haves and the have-nots is wide and widening. In this respect, too, Korea has not changed much since the war. The exploding population and the increasing numbers of the poor may eventually pose a far more dangerous threat to the destiny of the country than the Communists in the North.

One afternoon, I was on a train bound for Seoul from Taegu, with a retired professor of agriculture as my traveling companion. Just outside Yungdungpo, a mere fifteen or so miles from Seoul, there were small hills which were dotted with innumerable little caves. People lived in those caves, some of which were covered with straw mats.

“Look at them,” said my companion. “Just look at them.” Amid mounds of junk and refuse, on the reddish-brown earth barely covered with parched grass, ragged, barefooted children waved at our train. “The government spends millions on Walker Hill on swimming pools and all that,” he said, “and our trains run on time; but just look at them in the caves — and this is the twentieth century, mind you.”

Our train was perhaps a little ahead of the scheduled time of arrival, for it slowed down beyond Yungdungpo, stopped for a few minutes near the Han River, then pulled into Seoul exactly on the dot.

“It’s a crazy country,” sighed my old friend.

WHAT of the young generation on whom the future of Korea depends? And the children? I remember my young brother who was barely eight years old when the war came; I remember that small boy with a knapsack on his back containing what few precious belongings he had, braving the trails over the mountains, following my parents to the safety of Pusan perimeter, fleeing from the advancing troops of the northern Communists. There were thousands like him then, homeless and starving, dragged and herded from here to there by the grown-ups.

The happiest sight in Korea after ten years of absence was to see the children. For the most part, they are better clothed and housed and fed and cared for than I have ever known them to be. And they are better educated, though there is still a chronic shortage of facilities and well-trained teachers. “The number of school-age children is increasing so fast that educational facilities for them simply cannot keep up,” a teacher told me. Well, that is not new in Korea, nor in the United States, for that matter. What is heartening, however, is that sixyear compulsory education is in effect and that over 95 percent of eligible children are receiving free education. At the moment, there are nearly five million children in some six thousand schools throughout the country. The government is planning to extend six-year compulsory education to nine years, but until the plan goes into effect, education beyond the sixth grade is still hard to come by for the majority of Korean children. There are roughly one million students from the seventh grade to the twelfth grade attending about nineteen hundred high schools.

Education beyond high school is still limited to a fortunate minority. Competition for admission to colleges and universities is fierce even among those who can afford the cost of a college education, which is prohibitive for the great majority. At present, there are about 140,000 students enrolled in some 150 institutions, roughly half of which are private. Many students and teachers complain that the overall quality of private colleges and universities (with a few exceptions) is very low, largely because secondand third-rate private institutions are forced to accept those who have failed the extremely competitive examinations (governmentadministered) for admission to public institutions. In any case, a college education is still reserved only for those with money, no matter how they get the money. To be a college student in Korea is a matter of enormous personal privilege and prestige, and that is why college students in Korea have traditionally occupied a position of importance in the society.

This respect, which had reached its peak when the students took the initiative in the demonstrations that overthrew the regime of Syngman Rhee in 1960, is now dwindling. As a Korean educator put it: “Deluded by popular adulation, the students suddenly found themselves in a position of real political influence, and grabbed at the chance to become arbiters of policy. Their idealism was quickly exploited by dissident opposition politicians and, to some extent at least, by infiltrating Red agents from the North bent on encouraging anarchy.”

A college senior majoring in political science comes to mind, a young brother of a friend of mine, an army colonel, commander of a combat team on the front. The colonel and I went to a high school together in Pyongyang, and escaped to South Korea at about the same time in 1948. When the war came we volunteered for the army; after the truce, I left the country and he stayed in the service. His parents were killed during the war, and he has been supporting his young brother ever since.

He was on leave from the front when I was in Seoul. We reminisced about Pyongyang and the war, and, inevitably, we talked about the student demonstrations, which at the time went on almost everyday in Seoul. “You ought to meet my brother,” he said. “Of course, you can hardly remember him. He was about eight years old when you saw him last during the war.”

“He must be about twenty-three now,” I said.

“He is a senior in Seoul National University.”

“Is he one of those demonstrating?” I asked.

“Yes. He doesn’t tell me much about it. We can’t communicate with each other these days, if you know what I mean. From his point of view, I am old-fashioned and a reactionary.”

I laughed. “Because you are a colonel?”

“Well, that and also because I don’t approve of what he is doing.” Here we reminded each other how in high school we used to organize our fellow students to demonstrate against the Communist regime and how we spent time in jail and ended up being thrown out of school. We both laughed.

“Seriously, though,” he said, “I am getting quite worried about him. I’ve sent him through high school, and I have been helping him out through college, and you know a Korean Army colonel doesn’t make much money. Ah, well, he is my brother, and I have always tried to stand by him. But I am afraid I can’t do that any longer.”

“Politically, you mean?” I asked.

“No, that isn’t exactly what I mean. The point is, I don’t disapprove of his political interest and activities, but when he starts acting like an anarchist, that’s something else. I can’t and I won’t tolerate anarchy.”

“And you think the whole thing has come to that?” I said.

“Talk with my brother, if you can get him to talk with you about anything rationally and unemotionally, and you will see what I mean,” he said grimly.

THAT evening, the colonel and his brother, who brought a college friend, picked me up at Bando Hotel, opposite the U.S. Embassy, where I was staying for a few days. I had invited them to have dinner with me, and we went to a Chinese restaurant nearby. The young students looked very much alike; both had long hair slick with hair oil, as most Korean college students have; both were clad in well-cut blue suits, like a pair of rich boys doing the town. Our conversation, I recall, was pleasant enough, until we came to the subject of the role of the military in relation to the student demonstrations. The two students began to use such expressions as “military dictatorship,” “corrupt soldier-politicians,” and naturally, “traitors and betrayers selling the country out to Japanese monkeys.”

I think my friend would have restrained himself and tolerated them if his brother had not said, in an unmistakably sarcastic tone of voice, “Aren’t you ashamed of wearing that uniform!”

The colonel blew up: “And just who do you think you are to judge me! When you were a little boy and an orphan at that, I stuck my neck out and fought in the bloody war for this country, for you and you too!” He pointed his finger at his brother’s friend.

I tried to intervene.

His brother lashed out: “Who asked you to fight for me?” The colonel looked at me helplessly.

I cut in: “I fought in the war, too, you know. And I did that of my own free will. No, you didn’t ask me to fight for you; you were too young then anyway. But that’s in the past, and what we are concerned —”

The friend of the brother cut me short. “You’ve been in America for ten years. How can you understand anything in Korea! Oh, no, I am not saying you deserted the country or betrayed the motherland. All I am saying is that you are hardly in a position to understand us, let alone to judge us!”

“I am not trying to judge you,” I said.

“Then why the hell are you asking us all these questions, as if you were interrogating us?”

“Who is interrogating you guys?” said the colonel.

“You’re a colonel in the army!”

“Goddamn it, I am also a citizen and a brother of your friend,” said my friend.

I went out of the room to order more drinks.

When I came back in, they were still quarreling. “We are the new generation,” the friend of the brother was saying, “and we have had enough of your distorted values and narrow-minded policies and corrupt society.”

“Just because you are a new generation, which you are indeed, does not automatically make you a judge and an executer of the whole society,” said the colonel.

I said, “I imagine you were both high school juniors or seniors when the student revolution overthrew Syngman Rhee?” They nodded. I went on: “I wonder if you knew, at the time, what you were really doing and where you were heading for; I wonder if you had any understanding of the farreaching, fantastic political consequences of the event. And also, I wonder how you evaluate and judge what you students did following the success, shall we say, of your revolt.”

“Anarchy, nothing but anarchy,” the colonel said. “So you guys occupied the National Assembly, accused everyone, disapproved everything, and wanted to run the government yourselves — that’s anarchy!”

“Everything that was rotten had to be cleaned out,” said the brother bitterly, “and just when we were successful —”

The colonel cut in: “You mean just when you were about to take over the country.”

His brother continued: “— stupid soldiers jumped in, and you have been pushing us around ever since!”

“I want you to remember,” I said, “that the military supported you in the beginning. If you students think the success of your revolt was brought about exclusively by your own effort, you are gravely mistaken. You couldn’t have gotten anywhere unless people like your brother had stood quietly by, and with that very silence, or, if you want, quiet insurrection, helped you out.”

“And why did we stand by?” asked the colonel. “If we had not understood you then, do you think we would have let the Old Man crumble?” The students looked sullen. “What we understood then,” continued the colonel, “was that it was time for a new order in this miserable country. But, mind you, not anarchy!”

“Who says we want anarchy?” shouted his brother.

The colonel retorted: “Let me ask you this. You are against the treaty with Japan. Now, have you read the text of the proposed treaty? No, you haven’t. You are too busy demonstrating to bother to read it. You don’t read the government papers, you sneer and scoff at the government’s explanations, you sneer at the opposition politicians, and you sneer at me! All right, so I am a colonel. But, don’t you ever forget that I am not a professional soldier. There are no professional soldiers in this goddamn army, and, mind you, that’s a very important truth about us.”

I tried to restrain him.

“Now, let me finish,” the colonel said. “Take your demonstrations. Have you any concrete program of action, any convincing principles? No, no, you have nothing but sensational slogans, the meaning of which you don’t even understand fully. Selling out the country to the Japanese? Do you think I will close my eyes and let the Japanese swallow up my country? Do you think you are the only ones who love and care about this god-forsaken country? You despise me and others like me. Do you think we are unaware, do you think we are so stupid that we will swallow and enjoy corruptions and abuses of political power? Do you think we are taken in by the politicians? Let me tell you something. We are sitting tight and watching. Watching, you understand? Watching the politicians and watching you, too. We see many things we don’t like. We find many, many things which shouldn’t take place in a decent society. So what do you want? Do you want us to go out and shoot everybody? Oh, no, we are sick and tired of your kind of anarchy. We want and we need order in the society. When an existing order is corrupt, change it, not tear it down. Goddamn it, one revolt is enough, one coup d’etat is enough.

“You may think it strange” — he paused here and turned to me — “to hear this from me. But I am aware and so are many of my fellow officers that we can’t afford to establish a habit, a political habit, of changing government by force, whether it is by a student revolt or by a military coup d’etat. Otherwise, we will end up just like one of those LatinAmerican countries.”

“Not all military people feel the way you do,” said the brother, with a condescending smile. “We do have a strong support from generals and colonels.”

“Nonsense!” said my friend. “They are out of power, and they are politicians, just like the opposition politicians you sneer at. If you still think you can count on the support of the military, you don’t know what you are talking about.”

A long moment of silence followed. Then the colonel turned to me. “You’d better write this down. If the students get out of hand and if the police can’t check them and if the government calls us out to do something about the students” — he stopped and looked straight at the students — “we will crush them.” He turned to me again. “We will crush them, you understand. Not because we support the government 100 percent politically, but because we are tired of young mobsters running around wild!”

The students looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

“Let’s get out of here,” said the colonel to me. “I am going back to the front.” And that suddenly reminded me of the grim fact that the country was still at war with the Communists in the North.

LATER on, during my stay in Korea, I talked with many other students, some actively involved in demonstrations and some halfheartedly going along with them. And I am afraid I was not able to exchange opinions rationally and logically and calmly. Emotion appears to be the key to the feverish world into which many Korean students seem to have locked themselves. They are cocky, rebellious, contemptuous, melodramatic in temper, and irrational in behavior. They seem to believe that they can always throw out any government not to their liking. They take to the streets, they battle police, and they shout against nearly everything. There is no constructive idea or program of action in all their frantic, ritualistic movements; there is only hate-charged emotion against “dictatorship” and “corruption” and, lately, against “selling out to Japan.” By and large, they are stirred up by Spine-tingling sensations of anarchy and chaos, whipped up by a thrill of ephemeral heroism and a fleeting moment of pleasure in seeing the world go topsy-turvy because of them. They are masochistic; and they are tired.

What I would call a typical Korean college student is a young man who is poor and confused and sees little hope for his future. One particular student whom I remember is a junior majoring in literature at a private university in Seoul. He is twenty-two years old and has a brother in high school and a little sister in grammar school. His father is a minor official in the government and makes about forty dollars a month. “It’s really a miracle that my father can send my brother to K High School. You might say my father is one of those victims of Illyoo Byung (first-rate disease),” he said to me bitterly. “Illyoo Byung” is current slang in Korea, and it refers to the almost hysterical obsession of Korean parents (mostly of middle class) to send their children to first-rate schools and colleges in the belief that their children will have a better chance of getting a job if they have a degree from a first-rate institution. The Seoul National University is at the top of the list, and the university’s College of Engineering enjoys the highest rating.

“My father isn’t happy about me, I know,”the young man said. “I couldn’t pass the entrance exam to the Seoul National College of Engineering. So I am in a private university, and to make the thing worse from his point of view — and, I confess, from my point of view also — I am majoring in literature. There won’t be too many jobs for me, he says, or any money.”

I asked him how he was putting himself through the university.

“My father helps me out a little, as a good Korean father should,” he said with a wry smile. “But that’s what I meant when I said that it’s a miracle that he can help me out and still send my brother to that ’Illyoo’ high school, which is very expensive to go to. So I know he takes bribery money once in a while. Not much, but a little here and there, you know. Oh, I can’t condemn him, though. He works hard. He’s a tired little man.”

“Is his help enough for you?” I asked.

“Of course not. I have been a tutor ever since I was a freshman. Most of my friends are tutoring, you know, those grammar school kids from wealthy families who want them to cram for entrance exams to ‘Illyoo’ high schools. You might say I live oil’ the rich. I get room and board free and some spending money. What I want to get into is tutoring the brats of the nouveaux riches. They even pay all your tuition.”

He was not sure what he would do after his graduation. “I have to go into the service first after school. I’ll be commissioned.”

“And after that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t even want to think about it.”

An editor of a large daily in Seoul had told me that he had had nearly five hundred applicants, all college graduates, for one position open for a cub reporter. I mentioned it to him. “Yes, I know that. It’s frightening, you know. You go to school and you look around and there they are, several thousands of them milling around you, and they will all be looking for jobs, and you have to compete with them. I have friends who got out of college and couldn’t get jobs, so they went back to the army. Can you imagine? They used to hate the service, but they went back. You see, you are an officer and you get three square meals a day and a little money as long as you are in the army.”

“Are you one of those demonstrating?” I said. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Off and on. When I get stuck with the other guys, I have to.”

“Do you mean there’s a pressure on you from other students to join the demonstrations?” He nodded. (I recalled that during my talk with President Park, he had mentioned that his son — a high school student, I believe — had been beaten up by student leaders for not joining the demonstrators. The President had laughed it off.)

“I am too busy making my living,” the college boy burst out suddenly. “I have to finish college, I have to teach those brats, and I have to worry about my future and all. I don’t know what good would come out of the demonstrations. Sure, I’ve demonstrated, not just because I had to on account of other guys pressuring me but because I felt like it. But what do I want? I don’t know. I wish I could get out of the country. Go to America, maybe. I know lots of students who went to America. Like you. And they don’t come back. I am not mad at you. I am not mad at them either. I don’t blame them. If I could get away, hell, I wouldn’t come back either. But I know I can’t. I missed my chance. Now you can’t go abroad for study unless you have finished your military service. I’ll be too old then. If my father were rich or a cabinet minister, maybe I could get away. I know those rich boys and kids with influential connections who slip out. And they don’t come back either. Just go to the American Consulate and take a good look at those bleary-eyed college kids milling around applying for a passport. Just stand outside the Bando Hotel at noon and watch the lucky ones boarding the buses to the airport to fly out of the country, and watch those who are sending them off, sick with envy. Every kid I know wants to get out.”

Students are weary of the way things are and the way things are done in Korea; they are weary of those eternally squabbling politicians, of the country and the society, which never seem to get better; they are weary of their fellow students, too many of them, with whom they will have to compete in the face of severe unemployment; and they are weary of themselves, though they may not know it. And in that they are not alone. The sense of weariness and futility that finally emerges from always having to live with suspicion, mistrust, and cutthroat competition seems to be everywhere. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.

THE “bastion of democracy in Asia” is in a sorry state. America has pumped billions of dollars into Korea, militarily and economically. America has sent armies to defend it and has thousands of her people working in and for the country in all vital areas of the nation’s life. Yet a healthy political tradition of democracy has not yet emerged; and the physical and spiritual sufferings of the people have not been lessened. Is it America’s fault? Is there anything inherently defective in the intentions and approaches of American policy in Korea?

Many Koreans are quick to claim that the materialistically oriented Americans do not understand Koreans and their unique spiritual characteristics and idiosyncracies. All this is nonsense. Selfdeluding pretensions, which are too many in Korea, have prevented them from seeing themselves in naked truth and glaring reality. Like the whimsical heaven, Americans, too, have been made a scapegoat. Surely there have been many bungling Americans, inept ones, indifferent ones, and simply pompous asses working in Korea. But there also are many dedicated Americans who really care about the country and the people.

What do Koreans expect anyway? A ready-made everything? All their pretensions about their glorious historical past (which is ugly and shameful) and brilliant cultural heritage (which is shabby and little) ought to be kept under wraps. When illusions, delusions, and smug contentions are swept away, what is left is a somber reality that the majority ok Koreans are poor, miserable, suffering people, oppressed for centuries by governments and politicians, deceived by sweet-tongued political swindlers and jugglers, threatened by nature, terrorized by power-hungry fellow countrymen, battered by the Communists, exploited by the pseudo-democrats, and wavering on the brink of despair.

Korea’s dependence on American military and economic aid will not change for a long time. The American presence in Korea has so far managed to protect the country from the threat of another military aggression from the North and has contributed toward the maintenance of the republic. Apart from the economic and military aid, the American presence has provided an emotional security of a sort to the people. But it may be that the nation and the people have become accustomed to the American presence and commitment, and have developed the dangerous illusion that America cannot afford to withdraw from Korea, that American aid will continue indefinitely, and that America will have to bail the country out should it ever go down the drain. “As long as America is around, everything will be all right,” Koreans seem to be saying. It is a precarious logic indeed, for this kind of logic and the mentality behind it may have to conclude someday that “since America is not around, nothing is going to be all right.”

The ultimate responsibility for Korea’s inability to achieve social and political stability, above anything else, lies with its own professional politicians. They have never bothered to learn that a responsive government cannot cater to the whims and wishes of the man at the top, and that to belong to the party in power does not ensure that they will get rich and get rich quick. They have not learned that political power in a democratic society is not a toy to kick around in an endless game of power-grabbing. They have not yet learned that politics is not just a matter of cutting each other’s throat. They have not yet discovered that they represent the people, whose welfare and destiny are very important indeed.

As the country stands now, it seems as if there were a powerful centrifuge in full operation. If not disintegration, a subtle and dangerous process of fragmentation of society seems to be under way. Each person, either as an individual or as a member of a group, seems to be withdrawing into a tight little shell of mental and spiritual isolation. There seems to be little meeting of minds in the society. Each one is doing his utmost in the struggle for survival just to stay alive, looking after his own interest to the best of his ability, but it is not a healthy competition or the kind of struggle one may find in an open society under free enterprise. One senses in Korea today that life may keep on grinding away regardless of whether or not the people have a government, political parties, or even a nation. One becomes aware of a strange, shivery feeling of anarchy that is most disturbing — this silent sense of anarchy beneath the turbulent surface of raging, roaring political activities which seems to have been squeezed out of age-old experiences and the conviction that governments and politicians in Seoul make not a bit of difference to the people. Here again, Korea has not changed much since the war — or, for that matter, since time immemorial.

And yet, all is not lost in Korea, and there is hope, however slim it may be at the moment. For some twenty years, Korea has been living under a political system that is alleged to be democratic and free, and it has lived with the American presence and influence in the country. Something has come out of this experience, and that something may save the country in the long run.

What Korea has acquired from the “illusion” of living under democracy is a curious, negative kind of laissez-faire in its extreme form. There is in Korea a strange sort of freedom, with strings attached, of course. There are a few things you are not supposed to be or do. You must not be a Communist, or a Communist sympathizer, or a socialist; and you must not criticize or slander the government if you are not a politician of importance; and you must not slander Americans. If you stay away from these “sins” (there are a few more, but these are the main ones), then you are free to do whatever you wish.

This “freedom” is closely connected with another peculiar phenomenon in Korea: that, as a matter of principle at least, everyone ought to pretend that he is a democratically minded person. This pretense is a game Koreans are playing, but the game is being played, often ritualistically; and this may, just may, become a matter of habit in which Koreans may begin to take the game rather seriously. A strange miracle may be born out of illusions and self-deceptions.

A middle-aged Korean writer told me in all seriousness that he always carried two pens, which he solemnly produced from his pocket. “I need a pen in reserve,” he said, “because very often I go on writing and then suddenly realize that I shouldn’t be writing certain things, and I get mad and break the pen. Then I need the other pen to rewrite.” There are many Korean writers who are, he said, “two-pen writers” — symbolically speaking. “And how can you expect original and creative literature to come out of two-pen writers?” he asked.

A genuine freedom will come only when those in power realize that their power is derived from those they govern, only when they develop a little more confidence in themselves, and only when they are willing to hear even what they do not like with a bit more sense of humor, wisdom, and magnanimity.

There is a hope for Korea. The shrill voices of the opposition, after all, are better than no protesting voices at all. The sensational and undisciplined presses in Korea are better than no presses at all. The unruly, frustrated, and demonstrating students are, in the long run and from a larger point of view, better than silent, intimidated students. Unchecked, selfish, and cutthroat individualism is better than no individualism. In Korean life, there is something raw and grimly natural, something that is, ultimately, gripping. And perhaps that is why some people can carry on a lovers’ quarrel, as it were, with this unfortunate country. The miracle for Korea will come only when the people realize that a constant squabbling among themselves is not doing anybody any good. The slim hope will not bear fruit unless Koreans see themselves as they really are now and not as they were in some fanciful golden age that did not exist.

Koreans in the South are thoroughly individualistic, with all the heartening virtues and the exasperating drawbacks of individualism; and their toughness and resilience of independence, though born out of a mutual distrust and self-centered outlook, may someday become the genuine and truly humane foundation of their way of life. There is a hope.

. . . And then came the rain — too much rain, and with it the Flood. The streets of downtown Seoul disappeared under the muddy water, the Yuido airfield sank under the roaring Han River, and the rice crop was threatened. The President, the Prime Minister, and the other ministers went out in the countryside to survey the damage caused by too much rain and to console the people and tell them not to worry about the pouring rain, while — one could be sure — the drenched have-nots in their cardboard huts along the Han River were thanking the merciful heaven laden with black rain clouds — Then the rain stopped, and once again the country was shimmering under the wondrously serene, clear blue sky.