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Leavenworth in 1952. In Manhattan, General James A. Van Fleet, the former U.N. commander in Korea who had staked his faith in South Korea's fighting men and had been proved right, flatly endorsed Chang and his generals. "We have no stauncher allies," he said. "Let's keep them on our side." General Chang is a special favorite of Magruder himself.
Premier's Problems. Was General Chang the new boss? The man who planned the coup was not Chang but his powerful colleague on the junta, Major General Pak Chung Hi, 44. Reportedly, Pak's representatives went to Chang, told him that if he did not come to lead the coup, "we will have to kill you." Even as the uprising got under way, General Chang rushed off to see Magruder; for most of the first day, it was not certain whether Chang would lead the revolt or quell it.
Major General Pak was once an avowed Communist who helped organize an army revolt in 1948; he was sentenced to death by Syngman Rhee's officers but was released after reportedly undergoing a conversion and informing on the entire Communist network. Now vocally and violently antiCommunist, he rose to be the army's chief of operations. Disgusted with the corruption of Rhee's regime, General Pak is said to have planned a revolt early last year, but the student mobs that ousted Rhee beat him to it.
At first, Pak hoped that Premier John Chang, victor in South Korea's first honest elections, would sweep out the graft and inefficiency and rebuild the creaking Korean economy. Instead, corruption continued, and Premier Chang's bold economic plans made little progress. Heedless of the damage they were doing to South Korea's frail democracy, politicians selfishly fought for personal gain. Seoul's irresponsible newspapers exulted in their new freedom by jabbing at Premier Chang on every issue. President Posun Yun, supposedly a figurehead outside the political maelstrom, sniped openly at the struggling Premier.
The Angry Generals. Premier Chang had long been aware that the greatest threat to his regime was the huge army. Nevertheless he pushed ahead with his campaign promise to trim 200,000 men out of the 600,000-strong armed forces, whose maintenance takes over half of the entire South Korean budget. That angered the generals; General Magruder and visiting Pentagon brass declared their grave concern at the troop cuts.
To make matters worse, Premier Chang forced some prominent ROK officers into early retirement. But, lacking the crafty sophistication of Syngman Rhee, who used to reshuffle his officer corps with drastic regularity to make plots difficult, Chang left too many of his military opponents in their old jobs. When Plotter General Pak set his military revolt in motion last week, only 3,600 soldiers were needed to bring the government down and send Premier Chang into hiding.