Purge North of the 38th

The place was different, the names unfamiliar, but the ritual was the same. Instead of Czechoslovakia or Poland, it was North Korea; instead of Slansky or Gomulka, it was Lee Sung Yup. Last week the voice of Radio Moscow, which has tolled doom for hundreds of topdog Communists, called the roll of 12 more--North Koreans who "confessed" that they had spied and plotted on behalf of the U.S. and South Korea to overthrow Premier Kim II Sung and install a "new capitalistic government" in pitted, desolate North Korea.

Shortly before, the plotters were the respected "champions of the masses." Lee Sung Yup, now accused as ringleader, was North Korea's Justice Minister and mayor of Seoul during the 1950 Communist occupation. Pae Choi, an officer trained in the Soviet army, supervised the Reds' "guerrilla guidance bureau," and helped plan the Koje prisoners' riots. Cho Yun Nyong was Pyongyang's deputy Propaganda Minister. Im Hwa directed the Korea-Soviet Cultural Society. Last week, in North Korea's first major purge trials, these and six others drew the death penalty. Two other "plotters" got off with long prison terms.

Biggest to fall was Foreign Minister Pak Hong Wong, a Vice Premier, who has already been replaced by a face familiar to Westerners: taciturn General Nam II, the ex-schoolteacher turned military dandy, who was the Reds' chief truce negotiator. The Communist radio last week accused ex-Foreign Minister Pak of complicity in the plot. Pak, party member since 1920, onetime party secretary and onetime student at Moscow's Lenin University, was not among those tried. His time may come later.

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