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. . . We were especially fascinated by the two beautiful braids of hair. We were wondering—are these lovely braids really her own or has something been added. In the photograph it looks as though they hang clear to her waist, or then again it might be an optical illusion caused by the unusual lighting on the photograph.
Let's have more interesting pictures like this.
RANDY BIGELOW Hollywood, Calif.
"We Must Talk to the People"
Sir:
I would like to compliment John Osborne for his excellent report from, Korea [TIME, Aug. 21]. I think the people of the United States should realize that the only way in which we can defeat Communism is by proving to the people of the world, and to the Communist people themselves, that the democratic way of life has more to offer than the dictatorial way of life. "We must talk to the people," as Mr. Osborne so aptly puts it ...
PETER WOLL Newtown, Pa.
Sir:
John Osborne did a fine piece of reporting in "The Ugly War" ... by giving us a sympathetic report on our young fighters in a rough country, among "people whom they don't like"—and, let us admit it, whose people do not have any great love for us ...
To one who knows Korea, it comes as no surprise that South Korean police are as savagely inhuman as their bloodbrothers fighting in the ranks of the North Korean army. Many of them undoubtedly were tutored in Japanese police methods before the liberation in 1945 . . . And let us be frank about it; all Orientals are alike in their contempt for human life and dignity. They are cruel where we have pity; they are brutal where we show compassion; they are ingratiating to those they fear or think superior, but merciless with the weak or inferior who fall into their hands.
Osborne commends the South Korean army for bravery and effectiveness, and exempts its soldiers from the accusation of cruelty heaped upon the police ... It may perhaps, in a measure, be due to the three years' training of the South Korean soldier under capable and understanding American officers and noncommissioned officers. Possibly some faint idea of—I will not say democracy—human fellowship may have seeped in.
Under the subheading "War & Politics," Osborne touches on a weak point in our armor. Americans, great globe-trotters that they are, have never shown any great capacity for trying to understand the people among whom they traveled or worked in foreign countries . . . For three years, and even up to the time of the North Korean invasion, we had a "considerable staff" of military and civilian officials in Korea. But it is dollars to doughnuts that only a pitifully small number of them learned even the rudiments of the language, to say nothing of the country's history and culture . . .
We sent men undoubtedly well equipped technically for administering whole industries, men who could issue properly worded orders or directives from a comfortable central office, but whose faces seldom, if ever, would be seen by the workers or their immediate superiors. It takes more than just words to teach anything, it takes examples and repeated demonstrations of right methods, even the correct use of a shovel or wheelbarrow, tools which many Koreans have never seen . . .