The Russians Came

For the first time in months, coal smoke drifted lazily over Seoul; the Russians had come at last to Korea's fuelless capital.

The 60-odd members of the delegation steamed in, in their own special train, to negotiate a coordinated administration of northern and southern Korea, as directed by the Big Three Foreign Ministers' Moscow Conference. The U.S. commander in Korea, grim-jawed Lieut. General John R. Hodge, was doubtless impressed by the Russians' three sleeping cars, five flatcars to carry their Lend-Lease limousines, a radio communications car. He was certainly impressed by the three cars of coal--the first, except for three cars shipped to the Russian consulate, to be sent from northern Korea since the occupation.

Most of the Russians stayed on the train, kept the curtains drawn. But Colonel General Shtykov, head of the delegation, went with his immediate aides to the Chosen Hotel. There a teetotaling young U.S. Signal Corps lieutenant, detailed as manager of the hotel, was driven to drink for the first time in his life by the Russians' policy of ordering and then refusing meals and other services. The lobby telephone disappeared, General Shtykov had to have it. The Russians ordered all cars cleared out of the hotel garage to make room for General Shtykov's cars; the harried hotelkeeper refused because General Hodge kept his own car there. A few minutes later came a telephone call from General Hodge: "Take my automobile out and give the garage to the Russians."

Uproar, Silence. Next day, correspondents and photographers jammed into the opening session of the conference in the Throne Room, whither princes of the Japanese imperial blood once came to receive their Korean vassals. Shaggy Koreans crept between the chairs, stood on benches, snapped hundreds of pictures. A few appeared as blobs in the Korean press next morning.

After this first circus, all was silence and secrecy. Korea knew the conference was discussing how to get 240,000 tons of northern coal and 1,000 tons of northern steel shipped down in exchange for the south's surplus rice; how to unify Korea's two currencies (Russian occupation rubles in the north, Japanese-issued Bank of Chosen yen in the south); how to form a provisional government from the right and left factions which had grown out of Korea's go-odd political parties.

In a street below the conference room, some 600 anti-Communist students demonstrated with banners denouncing the Moscow Conference suggestion of an Allied trusteeship (maximum five years). Then the Korean police stepped in, impartially raided both the headquarters of the left-wing "Youth's Preparatory Army" (estimated strength 3,000) and of the right-wing "Army" (estimated strength 2,000).

What's in a Name? Between negotiations, the Russian delegates attended a state dinner at the Governor General's Palace, now General Hodge's residence. They ate turkey and trimmings, scowled but did not speak. After dinner the Americans entertained them with unaccountable selections from a full library of modern films. The feature was Sunbonnet Sue, a sentimentally saccharine "B" picture which scratched and jerked across the screen for 80 minutes. (General Shtykov's interpreter gave up after five minutes.) Sunbonnet Sue was followed by an animated cartoon about Traphappy Porky, a jitterbugging pig, which added to the Russians' puzzlement. Promptly after the final flicker, the Russians filed silently out.

A reporter asked one of them for General Shtykov's first name. He was rebuffed, with a curt: "That is classified information" (i.e., a military secret).

General Shtykov's first name is Terenty.

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