The generals took over in South Korea last week, proclaiming their desire to wipe out corruption, inefficiency and Communism. The U.S., which had trained the crack Korean army and hand-picked its leaders, was surprised by the coup and bewildered in its response.
It was 3:30 a.m. when the Jeeps and trucks loaded with soldiers began rolling into Seoul. At the Han River bridge, six confused military police guards made the mistake of resisting and were shot on the spot. Columns of marines and paratroopers raced unopposed to the center of the city, surrounding government buildings, blocking intersections and firing into the air to frighten the populace.
Curfew & Censorship. One squad headed straight for the Bando Hotel to arrest Manhattan-educated Premier John M. Chang, whom the army expected to find asleep in his eighth-floor suite. But Chang and his family had slipped away a few minutes before, were already safely hidden at a friend's house. When dawn came, the coup was complete. Seoul seemed almost normal but for the heavy guards at every intersection and the orders blaring over the radio from the headquarters of peppery little Lieut. General Chang Do Yung, 38, chief of staff of the 600,000-man ROK army, who now declared himself "chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee." Proclaiming martial law, General Chang ordered the Cabinet arrested, halted all civil air flights, banned political parties, forbade meetings and decreed censorship for the newspapers.
The U.S. military commander on the spot was General Carter Magruder, chief of U.N. forces, whose command includes the South Korean army as well as all U.S. troops. U.S. embassy boss was Marshall Green, experienced, red-haired charge d'affaires in Seoul. Almost as soon as the sound of the junta's guns rattled Seoul's windows, both were out of bed and drafting public statements condemning the revolt and backing the government of Premier Chang. Neither waited to consult Washington. General Magruder urged that Korean armed forces chiefs "use their authority and influence to see that control is immediately turned back to the lawful governmental authorities.'' Added Diplomat Green: "I wish to make it emphatically clear that the United States supports the constitutional government."
The junta felt justifiably confident that General Magruder would not use the two American divisions under his command to contest the coup. When Magruder and Green arrived in midmorning to argue with General Chang and his four fellow junta chiefs, the Korean generals brushed off the Americans with a flat refusal to end the revolt.
The revolutionary committee's first communique pledged to "oppose Communism as its primary objective . . . root out corruption . . . solve the misery of the masses . . . transfer power to new and conscientious politicians as soon as our mission has been completed, and return to our original duties." General Chang, a North Korean who was drafted into the Japanese army and graduated from a Japanese military academy, is well known and popular among U.S. officers, who helped him rise to the top in the ROK army by arranging to send him to the U.S. for a year's study at the Command and General Staff College at Fort