[507] June 12, 1980, Thursday, Late City Final Edition - The New York Times

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Document 507

Copyright 1980 The New York Times Company The New York Times
June 12, 1980, Thursday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 9, Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 936 words
HEADLINE: SEOUL PAPERS FIGHT MILITARY CENSORSHIP:CARTOONS ARE BEING USED TO HINT
BODY:

AT FEELING OF REVULSION ABOUT ENDING OF KWANGJU REVOLT

SEOUL, South Korea, June 7 - A flat white field of many crosses in the ground and beside it a man kneeling, his head bowed to the ground in prayer.

‘‘Pay respect to the dead!’’ said the caption on the front-page cartoon in the newspaper Hankook Ilbo. It was beside an announcement by South Korea’s military rulers of the names of 148 students and citizens of the provincial city of Kwangju who died in South Korea’s bloodiest rebellion in recent times.

The cartoon was a hint - no more than that in a press subject to military censorship - of public revulsion at the brutality with which the uprising was reportedly put down by soldiers. An embattled press is struggling to stay alive.

It cannot speak openly of the events of the past month, starting with demonstrations by 350,000 students across the nation that precipitated declaration of full martial law on May 17, closure of the National Assembly, the arrest of many politicians and opinion leaders and the occupation of political party headquarters in Seoul by armed forces.

Cartoon Portrays General

But the cartoons still get by the stolid rows of military censors lined up behind desks in Seoul’s City Hall in a cavernous, dim chamber where army officers red-pencil all hints of popular feeling against the military takeover led by Lieut. Gen Chon Too Hwan, the head of military intelligence.

The Korea Herald, a Government-controlled English-language paper, published drawings of a masked man being challenged by a citizen to identify himself. The man raises his bemedaled headgear to show a gleaming bald head - that of General Chon - and an entirely blank face.

The Herald is next to City Hall. Armed soldiers squeezed past their trucks in the narrow alley between the two buildings on recent evenings while an oily smell spread into the streets from the whirring presses of the newspaper.

Reporters’ descriptions of the Kwangju uprising of May 18 to 27 were censored and replaced by army accounts that attributed the casualties to North Korean agents and manipulation by Kim Dae Jung, an opposition leader, but there were signs that many South Koreans were skeptical of the official account.

Earlier Report Contradicted

An announcement by the martial law command said that 118 people died of gunshot wounds at Kwangju, 18 were battered to death, 9 were stabbed and 3 died in traffic accidents.

This was at variance with an earlier official report that many of the dead had been crushed by cars. The revision appeared to be a response to public skepticism at the first explanation and a general belief that most of the casualties came when troops fired on crowds between May 19 and 21.

The censors also halt foreign news coming into South Korea. Regional editions of Time and Newsweek as well as Hong Kong publications such as The Asian Wall Street Journal arrive on the stands with articles on Korea missing or blacked out. Little or none of the American television networks’ film on the Kwangju trouble appears on local television.

Instead, news organizations dwell on General Chon. A main news item is General Chon’s parallel military administration of the Government. Fourteen subcommittees report to an overall 30-man ‘‘standing committee’’ chaired by the general, with each subcommittee having power over its counterpart civilian department.

Photos of Park Abound

Meanwhile, book vendors suddenly started covering 15-foot areas of sidewalk with copies of works expounding the austere ideals of the late President Park Chung Hee, whose favorite among younger field commanders was General Chon, 49 years old.

Few passers-by bought them. It was understood that the military ordered distribution of the books. For the first time since just after the President was assassinated on Oct. 26, portraits of a pipesmoking Mr. Park - the front cover of the book - are all over the crammed streets of Seoul.

Newspapers also published General Chon’s picture, the first of him in civilian clothes, showing him shaking hands with Acting Prime Minister Park Choong Hoon in front of a huge signboard set up outside his committee building in central Seoul to mark its opening.

The press, directed by the general’s censors, reported that the most important of his 14 new subcommittees was an anticorruption panel headed by Kim Man Ki of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Its task is to stop the routine payment of bribes for contracts, to halt abuses of power by bureaucrats and to weed out high officials guilty of ‘‘do nothingism,’’ according to Dong-A Ilbo newspaper.

Corruption Is Endemic

It is understood that the general’s investigators have found evidence that aides to President Park accumulated fortunes in the tens of millions of dollars. The aides are said to include Pak Chong Kyu, his former chief bodyguard but not a relative, and arrested former officials, including Lee Hu Rak, former head of the Korean intelligence agency, Gen. Lee Se Ho, who is retired, and Oh Won Chol, an aide to President Park.

Corruption is endemic in South Korea and was a problem also for President Park, who came to power 19 years ago with a promise to end graft. Revelations of the fortunes gathered by his staff indicate to many Koreans that it may remain a problem for his successor without a vigilant and free press.

But there is little sign of relaxation of censorship. ‘‘The K.C.I.A. men appeared in our newsroom again,’’ a senior editor said, alluding to the ritual visits common during the Park regime. ‘‘They told us they’d be dropping in from time to time.’’