• U.S.

SOUTH KOREA: Mourning and Post-Mortems

9 minute read
TIME

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.

First, the government had claimed that Park had been killed “accidentally” when Kim Jae Kyu fired several shots at Cha in a fit of anger. Two days later, the government tacitly admitted the absurdity of that version by providing a second “official” account of the killing. According to this story, Kim and several of his KCIA agents had conspired to kill both Cha and the President because Kim had fallen out of favor with Park and feared that he was going to lose his job. That account seemed more plausible, as far as it went.

Last week Seoul government circles quietly leaked a third, more elaborate version of the murder story, this one involving General Chung. According to this widely circulated, “semiofficial” account, Kim tried to persuade Chung to join the conspiracy, declare martial law and mobilize certain military forces, presumably for the purpose of taking over the country. According to these reports, Chung refused and ordered the arrest of Kim and his coconspirators.

Chung is indeed reputed to be an incorruptible officer who never meddled in politics. But was he as innocent as this story suggested? Last week sources familiar with the events told TIME yet another version. It was that Kim had indeed planned a coup, but that he had developed his plot with “full support and knowledge” of some of the top South Korean army brass, including General Chung. The coup plan, which was incomplete at the time of the assassination, was aimed at removing Park from power but did not envision killing him; in fact, according to a TIME source, the coup misfired mainly because “the general began to have cold feet when he saw the body.” Instead of following through with the plot, Chung ordered the detention of Kim and his KCIA henchmen.

The army officers’ motives for joining Kim’s coup plan stemmed from Park’s harsh measures against rising political opposition and student protests. This led the generals to conclude that he was losing touch with reality and was no longer able to govern effectively. Moreover, both the army brass and the KCIA leaders shared a revulsion against the growing personal influence of Cha, Park’s arrogant, all-purpose adviser as well as his chief security officer. Kim had a personal grudge against Cha because he had repeatedly criticized the KCIA’S failures to prevent or even predict political unrest. For their part, the army officers resented the way that Cha, a lowly ex-lieutenant colonel, blithely ignored the military command system by issuing direct orders to division-level commanders.

On the fateful Friday, TIME’s sources allege, Kim invited Chung to dinner for further talks on “basically changing the situation” in Korea. Around 4 p.m., the general turned up at the KCIA building. Park at this point abruptly invited himself to dinner with Kim. The President showed up two hours later at the KCIA building with Cha and his chief of staff, Kim Kae Won, who was known to be a friend of the intelligence chief but whose own role in the events remains mysterious. Thus because of his planned appointment with the KCIA boss, Chung happened to be in the building when the Shootout and killings took place.

According to one TIME source, “What exactly ensued remains confusing. The vital question is: Who pulled the gun on Park? We have no idea at all, though it is easy to imagine that Kim Jae Kyn made a final plea for the President to change his basic political stance. A tough man and always a soldier at heart, Park could not have changed his mind so easily.

It’s entirely possible too that Park flared up in anger and even tried to beat down Kim. Somebody then squeezed the trigger. We know that to the last moment of his life, Park remained adamant and aloof.”

After the shootings, it is alleged, Chung was called into the dining room. Kim proposed that they rush to another KCIA office in Namsan, on the edge of Seoul’s old city, and immediately take steps to seize all radio and television stations. But at the sight of the President’s body, Chung became upset. Instead, he persuaded Kim to go to the defense ministry, while Chief of Staff Kim Kae Won rushed Park to a nearby hospital. When the alleged assassin and the general arrived at Chung’s office shortly after 8 p.m., Defense Minister Ro Jae Hyun was waiting there. Ro called in Premier Choi Kyu Hah, who reacted with unexpected forcefulness. He insisted that the nation should be informed immediately of Park’s death and that he should carry out his constitutional duty “no matter what, even at the cost of my own life and the lives of my family.” Ro and Chung sided with the Premier, and Kim Jae Kyu suddenly found himself saddled with full responsibility for the bloodbath. He and his top KCIA lieutenants were placed in custody.

The original coup plan, apparently, had moved too quickly for the army and had then gone out of control with the killing of Park. At a hastily called emergency Cabinet meeting, which was also attended by a number of generals, Choi obtained backing for constitutional rule and declared himself Acting President. Chung was named Martial Law Commander at the same meeting. The two men apparently agreed to act in concert in order to assure the country that it had a legitimate interim government. But who was giving orders to whom in this uneasy tandem was unclear.

At week’s end there were rumors in Seoul that the top army brass had secretly agreed to scrap South Korea’s 1972 constitution, under which Park was empowered to serve as President indefinitely, appoint one-third of the National Assembly and exercise emergency powers to detain his political opponents. It was not determined what mechanism for forming a government might replace the constitution, or how its abrogation would affect the political fortunes of the two most likely candidates to succeed Park. One was Kim Jong Pil, 53, a National Assembly member who helped organize Park’s 1961 coup and who subsequently became the first director of the KCIA; the other was Chung II Kwon, 61, a holdover from the Syngman Rhee government, who served from 1964 to 1970 as Park’s Premier.

Only outspoken Dissident Kim Dae Jung, 53, dared to break the silence maintained by other politicians. Still under house arrest for his long opposition to the Park regime, Kim urged that the existing 2,583-member electoral college should be scrapped in favor of a direct, popular election for a new President.

At week’s end South Korea buried Park with a somber, five-hour state funeral punctuated by wailing sirens. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and President Carter’s son Chip joined representatives from 42 countries. The presence of the opposition party leader Kim Young Sam was evidence that the mourning period had brought South Koreans a time of political truce. A traumatic bloodbath was behind them, but they had every right to be apprehensive about its uncertain consequences.

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com