After the Storm

Cautiously, tentatively, Seoul came back to normal. The crowded tea shops buzzed with excited conversation among Koreans who still could hardly believe their power had toppled Syngman Rhee's twelve-year rule. When the curfew was moved up to midnight, jazz bands resumed their raucous ways and the noisy, bright-lit bars were awash with tipsy revelers and eager ladies of the evening. In fact, except for a few damaged buildings and the soldiers guarding the National Assembly, there were no outward signs at all of Korea's fortnight of revolt.

It was reform week for Acting President Huh Chung's caretaker government. Everywhere, officials of the old regime were being accused, scorned or arrested. The Ministry of Finance set up screening committees charged with first identifying corrupt tax officials, then ferreting them out. The head of the Bank of Korea revealed that his institution had been used by Rhee officials to get kickbacks on loan applications. The police haul included Kang Hak Lee, chief of all Korea's police, who was charged with embezzling $120,000 from police funds and with printing fake Communist leaflets to stuff in the pockets of dead student rioters. To show its loyalty to the new order, the Bank of Korea announced that Syngman Rhee's face would be removed from bank notes. One group of students filed formal charges against Rhee (and 161 former Cabinet ministers and Assemblymen) for "criminal irresponsibility" in rigging the constitution to keep himself in office. Alarmed, Acting President Huh Chung urged a slowdown in the purging, only to be accused by the press of "preserving a corrupt bureaucracy."

Most impatient of all were the students. At the barricades they had demanded new elections. Now they were irritated to find the same old National Assembly still in session and long-windedly debating constitutional changes. In Pusan, Taegu, and Seoul itself, they staged new demonstrations demanding dissolution of the Assembly. Army Boss Lieut. General Song Yo Chan called out armored cars, tanks and tear gas, but ordered his troops to avoid strong-arm tactics. "The army will stay aloof from politics," declared the government. As for the hated Assembly, it was willing to bring charges against five of its Liberal Party members and expel them. But the legislators, pro and anti Rhee alike, seemed in no hurry to vote themselves out of office before the new elections expected in July.

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