(2 of 2)
It was a slim mandate, hardly designed to encourage continued highhandedness at home during Park's four-year term (although the returns had barely been announced when Park's Central Intelligence Agency rounded up 30 students on charges of plotting against the government). Defeated Opponent Yun went into hiding, but soon emerged and, in an unheard-of gesture in South Korea, sent Winner Park congratulations and flowers. Adding to Park's worries is a National Assembly election scheduled for next month, which his Democratic-Republican Party will be hard pressed to win. Neither is he expected to go overboard in any new policies of "independence" from the U.S. South Korea's struggling economy is beset by inflation that has hiked prices 40% in the past year, and Washington aid dollars, which came to $344.4 million in fiscal 1962, finance almost half the national budget. Besides, Communist North Korea still bristles across the 38th Parallel.
* In 1948, after a Communist-led military revolt at Yosu, Park, then a captain, was court-martialed and sentenced to life imprisonment, only to be pardoned and discharged. When the Korean war broke out, he was recalled but never given a combat command.