By Ray Hill _

H. was a keeper of bees, and on a warm
spring morning, with the forsythia in bright
yellow bloom, he was hung by the neck.

He and seven others.

Two days later, a sealed casket was deli-
vered to his family. The hearse drove off in
the direction of the church where the funeral
services were to take place. It never got
there. A motorcycle policeman brought it to
a halt and redirected the driver. The family
protested. It wasn’t the road to the church.
The policeman had no answers, only orders.
Phone calls were made. Friends and suppor-
ters gathered, some 70 in number, including
American priests. They ringed the hearse.
They refused to let it drive off in any direc-
tionbut the church. The riot police arrived,
hundreds of them. Finally the decision from
“on high” arrived as well.

“Under no circumstances allow the body
to go to the church. Take it to the re-
matorium and burn it as you were first told to

The police attacked. It tood them a good
half-hour of brutality to retrieve the hearse.
Then they climbed aboard their big buses
and drove off.

One of those attacked that day was an
American missionary by the name of Sin-
nott. He had spent 15 years as a parish priest
in South Korea. Then came 1974, and his life
changed.

“In Seoul,”’ he testified before a U.S, Se-
nate Sub-Committee, ‘I joined with other
Americans concerned about the rapid de-
terioration of affairs, about the abuse of the
labor market by foreign firms, about the
complete lack of rights of most laborers,
about the imprisonment of Christian minis-
ters and students because they tried to help
these laborers.

“Tn our innocence, we went to the Ameri-
can Embassy to report and get action. What
we did get was get on the list of people to
whom more attention should be paid, people
to try and keep under a bit of control. We
were dissidents. The then ambassador has
been quoted as calling us dissidents.

“We got a lot of attention from the em-
bassy especially after it was announced that
the newly-appointed President of the United
States was coming to Korea.

“The cream of Christianity in Korea was
in jail and Mr. Ford was coming to shake the
hand of the man who had put them there. We
were ashamed in front of our Korean Christ-
ians.
“More than 90 American missionaries
signed a letter asking that a delegation be
allowed to meet with a member of the Presi-
dential party. We waited five weeks, no re-
ply. :

“On the night of the 24hour visit, at 11
p.m., we finally got a reply. The party would
leave one man behind to meet with our dele-
gation. We received this concession after we
had called a press conference. to complain
that our request had been ignored.

“So, all we got was a man to stay behind
and say, ‘I’m very impressed,’ when he
heard the stories of the tortures, secret ar-
rests, beatings, unjust imprisonments, etc.
Park Chung Hee hanged eight innocent men
for allegedly masterminding a communist
plot. That plot never existed. And the Ameri-
can government is well aware that it never
existed.”

American officials have been, and re-
main to this very day, privy to the most inti-
mate secrets of their South Korean counter-
parts. It’s no secret, for example, what goes
on in the basement of Nam San, the head-
quarters of the Korean CIA.

Victims are stripped naked. They are
doused. with cold water and beaten with
boards; they are kicked and brutalized, and
then a towel is forced into the mouth until the
stomach swells and the victim faints from
lack of breath. It’s all routine, repeated until
the victim is broken and is ready to say or
sign anything. Some last a day. Some strug-
gle for a week. One student lasted six weeks
and was then ashamed that he hadn’t lasted
longer.

It’s been going on for years, ever since the
CIA put Park Chung Hee in power, ever since
the CIA created and trained the Korean CIA,
ever since the multinational corporations
took over the economy of South Korea. It’s
happening right now with renewed fre-
quency and increased vengeance, and
American officials know about it and do no-
thing to stop it.

Jimmy Carter knows all about it. He
knows it and doesn’t deny it. He knows it all
and says that South Korea is an exception.
He’s out to crusade for ‘human rights’. But
not in South Korea where he can do some-
thing about them or in North Carolina where
he can do something about them.

No one, not even Park Chung Hee, pre-
tends that there is anything resembling
human rights left in South Korea. For years
now, through a series of “‘emergency de-
crees,”’ he has eliminated all traces of rights

and liberties.
: As Donald R. Ranard, a former director

of Korean Affairs for the State Department,
told a House Committee, ‘‘I would begin by
stating that Korea (meaning South Korea) is
under the leadership of a government more
undemocratic than any since Korea was lib-
erated from the Japanese in 1945. :
“Whenever the spectre of au-
thoritarianism in Korea is raised, compari-
son always is made with Syngman Rhee. No
elements of the public body were safe from
his search and seizure; and those who lived
in Korea at that time can recall vividly the
beatings, the torture and all the other ugly
manifestations of a police state.

“Yet,” Ranard continued, “‘these occur- °

rences pale in comparison to’those taking
place in today’s Korea. . .Indeed, the best
way to summarize the status of human rights
in Korea today is simply to say that for all
practical purposes, there are none.”

He gave some examples:

“There is no freedom of the press. . .
There is no academic freedom. . . The right
to petition government for a redress of grie-
vances — perhaps the most essential re-
quirement for democratic rule — has been
denied by law and made a crime by
emergency legislation. . .”

The list of repressive “emergency de-
crees’”’ doesn’t end there. It goes on and on
and is added to frequently, sometimes witha
malicious whimsy reminiscent of the Roman
Emperor Caligula.

And yet, to focus on the madness or the
depravity and to ignore the method behind it
all, is to miss the point entirely.

It’s common knowledge that the KCIA is
not only in the business of terrorizing South
Koreans. Under the direction of Park Chung

Tong Sun Park

Hee, it indulges in what has been
documented as an extremely lucrative form
of extortion. Anyone interested in doing bus-

iness in South Korea, be it a giant multi-

national corporation or be it a small-time
importer of cheap trinkets, has to deal with
the KCIA and pay a price for the privilege of
doing business there. ;

But it’s not your average type of extor-
tion. Not at all. In South Korea, the pay-off
yields a jackpot. The privilege of doing busi-
ness isn’t free, but in the end it’s immensely
profitable. It means access to cheap labor,
cheaper than just about anywhere else. It

means docile unions. It means long, exploita- _

tive hours and extremely low wages. It
means working conditions which maximize
misery for the workers and maximize
super-profits for their bosses. And that’s
where the pay-off really pays off. That’s
where the KCIA earns its value.

It’s their job to root out, to arrest, to tor-
ture, to kill, to make sure that workers don’t
organize, to make sure that the exploitation
continues and production goes on unim-
peded. Conditions being what they are in the
factories, the excessive hours each day, the
seven-day weeks, the substandard wages
and working conditions, factories reminis-

>

cent of Manchester during the Industrial Re--

volution, all of it, would be impossible with-
out the constant presence of the KCIA at the
point of production.

One of its major functions is to patrol fac- .

tories and “‘union” halls. The results are evi-
dent in these comparisons: last available fi-
gures show that the Japanese apparel indus-
try was paying the low wage of 39 cents per
hour. In Hong Kong the average hourly wage
was 26 cents. Taiwan had an hourly average
of 15 cents, but South Korea, starting from
lower levels, had managed to sink far deeper
— 9 cents per hour!

In August 1974, in one shop in Seoul, 20

. teenage girls were averaging 7 cents per

hour. The temperature was 100 degrees in
the crowded, airless loft. The girls were
making dresses for export to the U.S.; they
worked 11 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a
total.of $23 per month!

The repression in South Korea, however,
means more than just super-profits for the
companies who exploit the workers there. It
also means unemployment for American
workers at home, Each time an American
company moves to South Korea, jobs vanish
in the United States. For the United States
too it means higher taxes, taxes to pay for
loans to Park Chung Hee,.taxes to under-
write phony rice-deals, taxes to underwrite

help torture and murder South Koreans who
dare to voice disagreement with Park Chung

" billions of dollars of weapons and taxes to .

-envelopes full.of crisp $100 bills. They we

Hee’s policies. 4
Not long ago, Gulf Oil revealed that it had
paid millions of dollars in hidden bribes
Park Chung Hee’s political campaign. What
Gulf did not reveal were the profits which
followed such corporate concern for t
“democratic” process in South Korea.
No one who has examined the contra!
which U.S. corporations exercize over t
economy there believes that the likes of Pars

Chung Hee could remain in power foreven@

Al

day were it not for the consistent, unqualifie¢
approval and support which he receiV

from the government of the United States”
And no one knows it as well as Park Chung”
Hee himself. :

If this wasn’t obvious before, it’s all 10
clear now. The Park Chung Hee regime iS ™)

desperate straits. It shows signs of seri0

deterioration, signs of extreme instability:
The desperation of Park Chung Hee has now
boomeranged on Washington. Anyone as de
sperate as Park Chung Hee has proven hit”

-self to be, could be desperate enough to sté {

a war.
What began as the greed of our corporal
giants and as the subversion, corruption,
colonization of a people on the other side of
the world, is returning to the source of origi?
with the vengeance of a plague. t
The Nixon administration, for examp*
knew as early as the beginning of 1970 t 2
Park Chung Hee was about to launch a cal
paign to bribe Congressmen and Senators®™
an unprecedented scale. It facilitated co?
tacts; it paved the way smooth and covert
up any tell-tale tracks. KCIA agents we”
given free rein in Washington and elsewhere
Congressmen and Senators were flown™
South Korea by the plane load. Bribes in @
form of hidden, cash campaign contributio®
were available for the mere asking — $30,”
for Congressmen, $50,000 for Senators. 0
were local politicians neglected. Nor we
their wives and relatives. ;
The wife of the governor of Louisiana 8

rt

-$10,000 from a South Korean. It’s no sec e

She has admitted it. There were lots of whit
passed at parties. They were stuffed
pockets. They were passed at airports. ©
Washington, in Seoul, anytime and a™%
where, and passed by people close to P#
Chung Hee. ; a

Three years ago, for example, a SOU’
Korean official handed John C. Nideckel
thick envelope as he was leaving Kimp0 “9
ternational Airport in Seoul. Nidecker Ww
Nixon White House aide at the time. He ™
ped open the envelope and saw that it CO
‘tained American cash in large denomi
tions. Nidecker turned the money over to”
then American Ambassador to South Ko®™
Phillip C. Habib. i

Habib, apparently knowing the sourc€
the cash, immediately turned it over the

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 20, 1977—Page 6

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