Cheju-Do Is Different

On Korea's mainland the struggle between freedom and Communism is grinding on as fiercely as anywhere on earth. But only 50 miles across the Yellow Sea, on the do (island) of Cheju, the older and no less titanic struggle between man & woman absorbs the interest of the U.S. military government.

In charge of the occupation is Lieut. Colonel Thurman A. Stout, whose briefing begins with an epoch several milleniums before Marx. In that dim past (so the legend goes), Cheju's founding fathers (Ko, Yang and Pu) emerged from three large openings in the earth to be joined presently by three Japanese women (who arrived by boat). As their offspring developed, a strange mutation occurred among the Kos, the Yangs and the Pus. The seaborne women settled down on the land while the earthborn men roamed the oceans and found other mates in foreign parts. The grass widows developed an independent amazon community, did all the work (mostly fishing) and never took permanent husbands. Males were invited to the island only once a year.

Male Revolution. Last week TIME Correspondent Bill Gray hopped over from Korea to see how things were going on Cheju. Its white mountain and green valleys were as beautiful as reported, he cabled, and three grassy, fenced-off holes in the ground--whence Ko, Yang and Pu supposedly had come--were still being tended and revered in a small park (not far from a more recent Jap-built air-raid shelter). In recent centuries a permanent male population had been established on the island, but women still outnumbered the men. The old native description of the island--"Too much wind, too much rock, too much woman"--still applied, though a male revolution was on the march.

The island's economy is still dominated by the strapping, glowingly colored Hahnyuh (sea women) who dive for pearls in two-piece bathing suits and goggles. Most men spend their days smoking, gossiping, doing housework. But others, getting dangerous modern ideas, have started working on farms and have muscled in on the local government. The boldest males have even dared insist on wifely fidelity.

Gray asked District Judge Che Wan Soon (male) of Cheju city what would happen if a Cheju male accused his wife of infidelity. "There would be a fight," said the judge, but he ventured no prediction of who would win it.

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