Against Wanton Desires

The crowd stood in awed silence as soldiers and customs officers heaped expensive clothes, cosmetics, toys and dress accessories into a vast pile and poured gasoline over it. With torches they set fire to the whole lot of goods, while women shrieked: "What a waste!" When the bonfire had died on White Sand Beach near Seoul last week, $20,000 in small luxuries had been destroyed. Since then the brightest lights on Korea's bleak landscape are from bonfires: a $100,000 blaze in Pusan, a $40,000 fire in Masan. Other fires are due in Seoul until $230,000 in confiscated goods are destroyed.

It was the sternest gesture yet from the "New Life" military government of General Park Chung Hee, 44, the olive-drab moralist who regards his mission as nothing short of "remaking Korean man." After General Park's junta assumed power last May, gamblers and hustlers soon found themselves in road gangs, millionaires were stripped of their wealth, and frills like engagement rings, high weddings or elaborate funerals were forbidden. When goods continued to be smuggled in from Japan, Hong Kong and American PXs, General Park proclaimed: "The sight of luxury goods arouses wanton desires in the mind of the people. Burn them."

Condemned to the fire were all contraband cosmetics, ornaments. Hong Kong brocade, alligator-skin handbags, Swiss watches, radios, phonographs and records, foreign-made suitings. American shirts and neckties, Japanese toys, imported liquor, American cigarettes and tobacco, imported cooking oils and seasonings--more than 200 items in all. Television sets are about the only exception, because they are necessary for government propaganda and to provide badly needed entertainment amid all the austerity. In the campaign against smugglers, twelve so far have been sentenced to death. When told by harbor police that the smugglers' hot-rod launches can outrun government boats. General Park offered advice: "When it is clear that the smuggler will outrun you, open fire and sink him. If they are caught, smugglers are going to be executed anyway. It doesn't make any difference if they are drowned at sea or shot on land."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.