61. The Student March that Brought Down Syngman Rhee.

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One of Hitler's gifts to the 20th century (and Lord knows how many later centuries) is greater confidence in the use of the word "evil." We may once, facing the mixed-up moral world, have been at a loss to find a reference for that word, but no more. Hitler nailed it, and at the same time nailed "good" as its opposite.

I think of that clarity now when I remember my response to the first two riots (or law-breaking demonstrations) I knew anything about. In the first, that at Newport in 1960 (see preceding Post), the students were to me clearly Yahoos, with no cause but their own pleasure. In the second, that at Korea University in the same year, the students were clearly true-blue soldiers in the fight for justice and democracy, the most noble political cause university people can have.

Though both of my responses were equally sure, my love for the fighters for justice and democracy went much deeper than my dislike of the Yahoos. I came home looking for a student leader to hug.  So too would you, university friend, if you had heard what I heard.

Try listening to this. A Korean professor of American Studies is explaining, over coffee, the political situation in 1960. "Syngman Rhee's way of governing is to declare martial law, round up the assembly members opposed to him, and make them vote his way. That's what he did in 1952, to defeat a motion for parliamentary government. He did the same kind of thing in March, 1960, to get himself re-elected. And nobody was doing anything about it.

"Except the students. You know what they did, the students of my university, my students? With the streets and housetops full of soldiers they organized a march, here to the Blue House, three miles, to try to pull the townspeople into some kind of fight. Fight all right. The soldiers let them have it. From the rooftops. When they reached the square. Two hundred [142, later] of them were killed, 2000 [1500, later] wounded. Our students they were, and students from the other universities, who joined the march on the way.

"Well, we had a faculty meeting to decide whether we should march.  But too many professors were afraid for their jobs, and maybe their lives, for us to make a decision. Still, when we came out each individual faced a choice. Turn one way and you were on a streetcar heading for your house. Turn the other way and you were heading for the government buildings. Some students had gathered around that path, waiting to see and, hopefully, help.

"Most profs went home but enough of us turned toward town to excite the students, who gathered around offering aid. 'Do you need a jacket? Water? A hat?' More students came running up, with some running right back toward the dormitories, carrying the news.

"There on the grass we made our banners, two of them. (A student had suddenly appeared with, surprise, cloth, paint, and poles.) On the first banner we wrote this: [My informant —  whose name, alas, I cannot now dredge up — put words, in Korean, on a card I still have.] It says, 'Make up for the bloodshed of our students.' On the second banner we wrote, 'Syngman Rhee, step down.'

"By now there were a lot of students, falling in behind us and cheering as we moved through the campus toward the streets. It was a rare thing in Korea. University teachers here are highly respected but aloof. They don't do this kind of thing. Ordinary students were amazed, as you could hear in the shouts from our margins to those in the buildings. 'The professors are marching! The professors are marching!'

"But it really was a student march. They poured in from all parts the campus, gathering behind their leaders. These leaders had been through it before — yes, all those dead, all those wounded, many by hostile (hired?) people on the sidewalks — and they knew what they were doing. They knew what we were worth to them. You could see that as we got to the campus exit onto the city streets. There we could see figures on rooftops. There the sidewalks were filling up. Just before we got to them, at some leader's sign (I suppose), the students formed ranks around us, front and sides, to protect us.

"There was little cheering from the students. It was too tense. And from the streets and windows, at first there was near silence. Surprise, I think. But you could hear individual voices. 'The professors are marching. The professors!'"

If I there had been any pretense to objectivity before it would have broken down here.  I get worked up as I think about it now and my source then, for all his Asian reserve, broke at this point into open confession. He had gotten a Ph.D. in American Studies at some Midwestern university. Drawing on material at the USIS, and on talks by Fulbrighters like me,  he had for eight years or more been teaching students the values of critical inquiry, open discussion, and democratic government. And he'd seen those values trampled on, and trampled on. And he'd done nothing about it. Now here were his students, not only putting their lives on the line for those values but putting them on the line for him.  It was the high point of his teaching life, maybe his life. He confessed it and said, "I looked at those students between me and the crowd and I said, 'I don't care if I die. I will finish this march with them.'"

The rest of his story was wonder. The streets began to cheer. "The students! The professors! Go! Go! Yea! Yea!" People came out of the doors with sandwiches. An elderly man broke through to give my colleague a Coke. There were more and more of them, the closer they got to the government house. The figures on the rooftops melted away. In the square there was unity, expressing itself in a roar. From streets and houses.

They stood for a while, presenting their message, then went their ways. My friend went to a noodle shop with some colleagues. "We went home not sure whether we'd have jobs the next day. Or a home." Next day, 26 April, a student came bursting in. "We won. We won. Rhee is resigning. We won."

If you react to that story as I did you can imagine the kind of shape I was in when, back in the States before the year was out, I joined the March on the Pentagon.  Next Post.