The Silver Ax

When Lyuh Woon Heung was seven, he watched his father, a yang ban (big landowner), beat a servant to death--a privilege that was legal in Korea until 1908. Said Lyuh later: "I determined then that when I became a man, I would destroy the yang ban class."

Lyuh never saw his boast realized. But he fought to make good on it. He was perhaps the only man in Korean politics who was disliked and feared by Communists and yang ban alike. Lyuh had neither a price nor a boss.

After Japan surrendered, Lyuh organized the left-of-center People's Party. Last year fellow Koreans of varying political stripes tried nine times to kill him. The extreme rightists hated the quiet, silver-haired teacher because he helped create a left popular front movement. The Communists wanted him out of the way because he fought their attempts to infiltrate his party.

Like others caught in the middle, Lyuh did a lot of shilly-shallying. His enemies called him "The Silver Ax"--he looked fine, but he would not cut. He thought Korea could be unified without violence, "unless we let the extreme rights and lefts play tug-of-war."

Koreans liked him. When he appeared in public, young Koreans crowded around, as eager to see Lyuh as American kids are to shake hands with Babe Ruth. He was head of the Korean Amateur Athletic Association, helped make the marathon Korea's national sport.

This spring his house was bombed while he was away. Last week, as Lyuh's car drove down a street near his home, a young gunman fired three shots. Two of them found their mark. A police lieutenant rushed out to capture the assassin, grappled with Lyuh's bodyguard instead. The murderer got away. Two hours later, in a Seoul hospital, Death, as it must to all men, came to Lyuh Woon Heung.

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