Headed the Right Way

TIME Correspondent Frank Gibney spent part of last week with South Korean army units which had regrouped and made a creditable comeback since the first nightmare days of the Communist onslaught. Gibney cabled:

A WEEK ago, on the U.S. front north of Taejon, I had shared the disgust of U.S. officers at seeing trainloads of able-bodied Korean troops--unorganized but carrying their weapons and equipment--roll past on their way southward. One U.S. battalion commander, thinking of his own outnumbered soldiers, had snapped: "Can't somebody get these fellows turned around and headed the right way for a change?"

But by this week it was evident to all U.S. officers that the South Koreans were fighting well. For six days, three South Korean divisions had held the line stretching north of Umsong through Chungju and Tanyang against increasing North Korean attacks. In mountainous country where the invaders were hard put to it to use their armor, the underarmed South Koreans-more than held their own. They had badly mauled several Red columns and they had cut one regiment to pieces. Among the proofs and trophies of victory were captured Russian machine guns, rifles, antitank guns and armored cars. One division had sent back to headquarters 20 captured Russian jeeps, almost all brand new, and some with only 500 kilometers on their speedometers.

In one colonel's staff room, I saw a captain who had once been a Seoul dandy, sitting in a fancy, lace-trimmed undershirt before a map board. But he had a pistol strapped on over this choice garment, and there was no doubt that the pistol was more important than the shirt.

Bad Liaison. South Korean staff officers were making plans for a large-scale counterattack as soon as badly needed weapons and ammunition arrived. But the main Red mechanized drive, as it forced back the Americans to the west, increasingly threatened the Korean west flank. When Chochiwon fell, it was a deadly blow to the South Koreans, on the right of the Americans, for the east-west road between Chochiwon and Chongju had been their main supply line. It was a dramatic case of bad liaison. Whose fault it was I don't know, but South Korean field headquarters first heard of Chochiwon's fall in a highly roundabout way--by a news broadcast from San Francisco.

Late one afternoon, with a South Korean lieutenant and sergeant, I drove up to a small cluster of farmhouses in the central uplands. As we approached, there was no sign that the dingy houses with crumbling walls were anything but the outskirts of a simple farm village. A few seconds later, as we parked our jeep in the outer courtyard, we found ourselves inside the new headquarters of the South Korean army's ist Division. Koreans, worried about low-flying Yaks, are well trained on camouflage and use it prodigally; here they had done a masterly job. The radio truck was hidden beneath a leafy canopy next to heaped piles of old straw. Jeeps and weapons carriers were expertly tucked away under the overhanging eaves of farm buildings and trellised with twigs and branches. In the center house of the compound was the division commander's office, formerly a farmer's parlor.

Learning the Hard Way. Smiling, round-faced Colonel Paik Sun Yup, the division commander, reached out his hand and gave me a gold-toothed "How do you do?" in English. At 30, Colonel Paik is rated the best field commander of the Korean army. His younger brother, 27-year-old Paik In Yup, commander of the iyth Regiment, was wounded in fighting farther north after successfully leading his regiment out of the precarious pocket. The two Paik boys' are a shining contrast to the inefficient, sluggish South Korean commanders who bungled the early days of fighting in the west. As the pressure grows, they and others like them are inevitably moving up to top command jobs.

The elder Paik, the colonel to whom I talked, had been sent by the Japanese to Manchukuo's Military Academy. He got his early military experience with the Manchurian puppet forces, fighting Chinese Communists of the Eighth Route Army.

In the bitter weeks of the Korean retreat, the officers and men of Paik's outfit learned much. They learned about patrols, flank security and taking cover. American advisers had tried to drill these things into them for months but, until forced to apply them in combat, many Koreans had not taken them very seriously. Paik always did. He drove his men, one officer said, "harder than the enemy did."

U.S. advisers on duty in the field marveled at Paik and his division: "It just isn't the same army as it was two weeks ago. They've learned the hard way--but they learned fast."

"I'm a Combat Man." With proper leadership, the basic assets of the Korean soldier quickly asserted themselves. He has the good qualities of the World War II Japanese soldier--fierce courage, tenacity, obedience, and ability to live and fight on a shoestring. But instead of the bloodlust and ruthlessness of Japanese militarism, he is animated by the strongest urge known to military men--defense of one's own land against an invader.

The Korean soldiers I saw at this front were happy men, cheerful to talk to. Looking like rag dolls in their baggy, mustard-colored uniforms topped by big U.S. helmets, they quietly manned craggy command posts or patiently waited behind the slopes of mountains to go into action.

In the first days of the war, the premature destruction of a Han River bridge ended all of Colonel Paik's hopes for an orderly withdrawal. At the head of his division, Paik marched southward to cut his way through encircling Communists. He does not recall exactly what time they retreated. "I'm a combat man," he reiterated, "I was too busy to notice."

* In Los Angeles last week, Brigadier General William L. Roberts, former head of the U.S. Military Advisory Group in Korea, explained that the South Koreans had not been given any tanks, heavy artillery or combat airplanes because the U.S. was afraid that the South Koreans would attack Communist North Korea.

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